Yesterday’s poll was pretty enlightening.  If your predictions are correct, things are going to go very sharply downhill in Selfishland while Dan is out of town for the next week. Top predictions were:

Sink full of dirty dishes (158 votes as of this writing)
This is a distinct possibility. Cereal bowls and yogurt spoons mostly probably. Unless I stock up on those drinkable yogurts and eat my cereal by the fistful straight out of the box. Hmm. Good ideas, good ideas. Of course, I haven’t eaten anything yet today so as of now the sink is still empty.

Sharp increase in online fabric shopping as surrogate for love (158 votes)
Possible, but I’m also holding out for a little shopping in Seattle, so it’s possible that some restraint will be practiced. I’m trying to work through some stash this week though, and if I do a good job that may give me the false sense of security that pushes me over the edge into some sort of late-night online fabric shopping spree.

Malnutrition (117 votes)
See “Sink full of dirty dishes” above.

Picking on cat due to unfulfilled need to pick on someone (113 votes)
Never! Baby kittums can do no wrong in my eyes. Don’t be ridiculous.

Blog oversharing resulting from lack of social interaction (112 votes)
Hmm. I would say this is probably unlikely. I think I’m pretty good about keeping personal stuff personal and avoiding the TMI. You never know though- I could get unpredictable because I have my period right now.

Big pile of finished sewing projects (107)
Well, this might be a bit optimistic (though to be fair, “Big pile of unfinished projects” wasn’t too far behind in the votes.) But I have decided to work through some stash, as I mentioned a moment ago, and although Dan has only been gone for about an hour an a half, I just finished this Sidonie skirt:

Pardon my bad face day. I didn’t actually make this skirt in 1.5 hours. I started it last night while Dan was packing and finished it this morning. Sidonie is a BurdaStyle pattern which I downloaded back when most of the BurdaStyle patterns were still free. It’s as no-brainer as a lined skirt with a zipper can get. Bias cut with just two back darts.

I used a gorgeous wool remnant that I purchased from Vogue Fabrics in Evanston back in April for $7.50. I had intended to make a skirt with it when I bought it, but I hadn’t thought to do it on the bias (don’t you love a bias plaid wool skirt?). And since I decided in favor of bias last night, I had to do some serious, serious fabric acrobatics to cut this out of a mere 3/4 of a yard. First, I eliminated the back seam and put the zipper on the side (I like this so much, I see no reason to make this with a back seam in the future.)  Also I had to eliminate the narrow waistband because I didn’t have a long enough continuous piece of fabric after cutting the front and the back. And finally, I shortened the pattern and made about as narrow a hem as you can possibly make on a fairly heavy wool.

And this fabric- this is REAL wool. I love this stuff. It loves to be ironed aggressively with tons of steam, and it’s gorgeous and cooperative and scratchy and flannelly and so very very scratchy (I know I said it twice)! I don’t know if I could even have stood it if I had been able to add the waistband. The only issue I had with this plaid was that it was somehow slightly warped even though the plaid itself is completely square. I had to really force it to be symmetrical on the bias and despite lots of tugging and grain straightening attempts, the skirt is still ever so slightly lopsided. But I don’t think it’s noticeable to anyone but me.

I was completely obsessive about matching the plaids, as you can see from the photo of the side seam above. I even adjusted the dart placement slightly so that he plaid would be mirrored on either side of each dart:

And I did the zipper by hand, as usual:

As you can also see, I did a little topstitching at the waist for some stability and to mimic the look of the missing waistband.

Instead of using regular lining fabric (I am finding the usual lining fabric linings on my skirts to be increasingly annoying and uncomfortable) I used some very posh, smooth Vera Want knit that I got from Fabric.com some months ago. It was described as “luxe” and it certainly is- it’s got a creamy, cool, weighty feel to it, and I had purchased it with a goddess dress in mind. However, when I received it I found that it had sort of a sickly off-white shade to it, the aesthetic of which reminded me of nothing so much as a … um, are you allowed to say “condom” on a sewing blog?  Um. Anyway, it’s turning out to be a wonderfully luxurious and comfortable lining for a heavy, scratchy fabric. (Actually, I just noticed after taking the pictures that the lining is a little bit long and you can see it in that first picture.  I guess I’ll have to take another inch off of it.)

Oh, and I’m wearing it with my Minimalist Cowl top, the pattern for which you can download for free.

Okay, I was going to make myself some lunch, but I think I’ll get started on another skirt instead. More later!

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