Colette Beignet 1005 skirt. Winner! (+ Vogue 8634 top)

I won Paola's give away. She is so generous.  I am so lucky. I had been fancying this Beignet skirt for a little while, but was trying to talk myself out of it due to having an extremely large pattern collection. (You have plenty of skirt patterns Kbenco,you could just adapt something, etc etc). But fortunately for me, as I would never get around to adapting something else, here is the real deal.

I am very happy with this skirt.
It was a dream to sew. The drafting is perfect, which is such a relief after sewing all those Big4 patterns. I had a little moment of intense satisfaction every time a seam line matched perfectly. This oddity is possibly why sewing makes me so happy.
I admired Colette's instructions, particularly the tip to reinforce the waistline with twill tape ( I used a bit of selvage). 

In fitting, I ended up decreasing a size, having gone up to the next size per Colette instructions as my hips are between sizes, but finding this too big in the toile (non-stretch).
I took in at the waist in both my toile and in the final fabric, which is a stretch denim, circa 2008 from Kerryn's Fabric World.  The skirt was also cut a little shorter than Colette designed, due to fabric constraints. There is a tiny bit of piecing in the front facing for the same reason.

I did not line the skirt. I have some stretch silk lining, but decided an everyday denim skirt was not  a good candidate for this fabric, nor for a non-stretch lining, so I bound all the seams and the facing in a bit of left over shirting cotton cut on the bias.

The fabric is quite thick, so I did not bother making a matching petticoat.

I finished the hem with bias binding, using a catch stitch so that the hem will stretch with the skirt and not pop my stitching during wear.

I find that front buttoning skirts have a short life due to buttonhole wear. In an attempt to extend the life of this skirt, only the top 5 buttonholes are functional. All the other buttonholes are uncut, with the skirt machine sewn with zigzag to the underplacket, and the button attached by hand over the top of the buttonhole.

I do not often wear a belt with a skirt, but wanted to leave myself the option to do so. I made the buttonkeepers with buttonhole stitch over 6 strands of embroidery cotton, instead of applying fabric tabs. These are quite unobtrusive when the skirt is worn without a belt, which is just how I wanted them.

I topstitched the front and back princess seams, but not the side seams, so that I could adjust the skirt for fitting should I need to. Of course, having allowed for fitting, the final skirt try on was just right, and I did not have to do a single bit of unpicking. This may be a first for me in an item worn below the waist.

Feeling rather smug about my new skirt, I hung it up in my wardrobe, where it looked just like an orphan, so I made a few tops to wear with it.

I am wearing the first of these tops, Vogue 8634, which I made several of  last winter.

 This one is made from a cotton jersey, The Remnant Warehouse 2012, (this is the fabric that ran in its welcoming wash, but did so in a rather attractive manner - see that nice blotchy pink within the print?) and I squeezed it out of a 1.2 metre  generous cut by having 3/4 length sleeves and a slightly less generous depth of cowl.

Stashbusting statistics,2.3 m denim 2008, 1.2 metre cotton jersey 2012