Sporty Americana

For Mother's Day, my daughter sent me a mystery box of fabric from FabricMart!  It arrived a couple of weeks early, and of course I opened it up as soon as I could.  She then told me that I was supposed to wait until Mother's Day to open it.  Feeling a little guilty, I told her that since I had opened it early, that I would try to sew some of it up into some new outfits by Mother's Day!   As chance would have it, Patternreview.com was also having their Mini-Wardrobe contest, which had a deadline of May 15th, so I decided to enter it to give me a personal push.  I was able to use 4 of the fabrics from the package- this floral knit, the blue gingham, a solid cream jersey and a red floral voile, in the outfits.  I did supplement with a denim that I had, as I really needed another solid fabric to make the coordinates work.

The first thing that I made was the gingham skirt, and it took me the longest because it has so many details!  I used jean zippers and antique brass snaps for the back flaps.  The main thing that I did differently from the pattern was to put the main skirt pieces on the bias.  I wanted to pockets to stand out, so they got cut on the straight grain.   Here's the pattern cover:

I made the long view, but didn't have quite enough fabric for the whole skirt, so ended up making it about 6 inches shorter.

The top with the tie is from the April issue of Burda magazine.  It's a cute little pattern but they did leave off some markings on how far to sew the tie ends.  Apparently it is also an envelope pattern- Burda 6427- so I would recommend getting it, rather than tracing the magazine version to make your life easier!

My next fabric was a super lightweight red and white floral voile.  I knew it would have to become a button front shirt.  For this one, I used Simplicity 1694- a flowy loose fitting shirt with a few options. I think it works tied or untied.

The last top that I made is a from the cream jersey knit, using Kwik Sew 2844.  I love kangaroo pockets and hoods, but you don't usually find them on sleeveless tops!  This was a fun one to sew.

And last, but not least, are the denim shorts with slant pockets, using Great Copy Classic Pants pattern.  You can maybe see a little closer here that the denim has a tone on tone floral design.  This was the only fabric that wasn't in my Mother's Day package, but it really tied everything else together.

For the contest, you had to make three tops and two bottoms, and all of the tops had to be shown with each of the bottoms.  So, here is my composite photo.

I think I'm going to get a lot of mileage out of these separates!  A big thank you to my daughter for the gift- it's already given me hours of enjoyment while sewing up the pieces.  I normally am not a print mixer, but the gingham works almost like a neutral.  It's amazing what you can do with a mystery bundle if you get lucky with the fabrics that they send you.  Check out the other awesome entries over at the Patternreview.com contest entry page to get inspired!

Happy Sewing!

Ann