A little halloween whimsy.

I call her G, the Good witch.


And I'm not sure if I have ever told you, but I *heart* striped tights. Particularly black and white striped tights. I got a pair on a whim three years ago, and both girls have worn them religiously. Found a new pair at Target this year. Cha-ching.

I wanted to do a simple little corduroy skirt, but always seem to talk myself into adding a little flair...enter the green/yellow ruffled lining.

Here is where I tell you that skirts are SO EASY. I don't even use a pattern anymore, because basically you are sewing rectangles together and adding elastic. Adding a lining isn't really hard either, particularly if you are adding an elastic waist band. Heck, I don't even use a ruler or a tape measure anymore...I simply eyeball the fabric and cut a relatively straight line. If one side of the skirt happens to be a quarter inch higher than the other, I highly doubt the untrained eye can tell. And if you are looking that closely at my daughter's "skirt", then you have issues. Case in point--if you look closely at the picture above, the left side of the top purple layer sits higher than the right. I mean it when I say that sewing is only fun for me if perfectionism is not involved. Period.

So, this entire project...cutting, sewing, adding elastic...would have been done in less than an hour. Except. I forgot I was working with corduroy, which is a rather bulky fabric. Particularly this weight of corduroy which was very thick. I normally cut my fabric very wide, to produce a really full skirt when you cinch it up with the elastic waist band. And that works well, when you are working with lightweight cotton--but not THICK corduroy. Long story short (too late), I ended up having to take some of the original width off of the skirt...which wouldn't be so bad if all the seams and ruffles weren't already sewn together.

Instead of taking the time to rip the seams apart and start a-new....I just cut the side seams off, made the skirt the width I needed to make the waistband work, and sewed it back together. For those of you that don't sew, I know that seems logical. It is, in fact, the laziest way to fix my oversight. Again, I'm guessing you'll never be looking on the inside of my daughters skirt. And if you do...

Issues. That's all I've got to say.

This skirt makes me very happy. And G likes it too, although she likes to remind me that it is "just a skirt" when I tell her 100 times a day how cute she is. I also think that minus the striped tights, with brown boots and maybe a white or orange monogrammed shirt, this becomes a fall ensemble, so I'm thinking beyond Halloween.

Hello, my name is Sara. And I think entirely too much about children's clothing.