For my first Cali Fabrics project, I chose a gorgeous orange embroidered eyelet. I immediately gravitated toward this fabric because of its gorgeous color, but once I received it, I became even more enamored with its overall design. I like that the eyelet openings are relatively small, meaning that I didn’t have to worry as much about underlining. Plus, the embroidery ensures that the design is visually interesting!

Since the fabric is so stunning on its own, I didn’t want to make it into anything too complicated. Once I saw the scalloped border, I knew that I had to use it for the hem. I stumbled across this skirt  and it was kismet- I had the perfect fabric to make my own version of it!

The major question for this project: to underline or not to underline? I loved the transparency of the fabric but was worried about having my legs too much on display. After trying several underlining fabrics beneath it (white, off-white, black), I decided to forgo the underlining.

Lining up the embroidered motifs and the eyelets nearly drove me batty! I wanted to make sure that the skirt hem used the scallops, but I also wanted to make sure that the eyelets didn’t hit in a place that was too revealing. Ultimately, I was able to use half of the fabric width for the front and half for the back! The fabric is only 40” wide so if you’re much taller than 5’4” you might not be able to do this.

Once I cut my fabric and sewed my darts, it was easy to add side seams and the invisible zip…or it should have been! Somehow when I was sewing the side seams my pieces moved a ¼ inch meaning that my hems didn’t match up. Unpicking lines of stitching on embroidered fabric is no fun, especially when I had been “smart” enough to use thread that perfectly matched. I was so worried that I was going to unpick the embroidery instead of my stitching! After a stressful hour or so I was able to re-sew the side seams and this time all was well. To finish, I used quilt binding that matched the fabric for the waistband.

Despite the headaches with laying out the design and unpicking my stitches, I love my finished skirt! It is such a summery piece and it’s the perfect way to finish out the season.

Alexandra is a librarian and blogs about her sewing and reading adventures over
at The Library of Alexandra.