Heather: Reversible Floral Skirt

At a recent visit to the Sewing and Craft shows at the NEC I spotted this beautiful viscose mix floral fabric from Montreux Fabrics.

I've never seen the stall there before, but it was piled high with gorgeous rolls, and even better, they had boxes and boxes of remnants and roll ends to root through. Now, I'm a sucker for a remnant. The challenge presented of having just too little fabric and having to cut creatively, or add panels, really makes me think about what I'm making. This piece was just 80x150cm so just enough for a very simple shift dress or a nice skirt. 

I pulled the fabric out of my stash the other day and, whilst laying it out on the table, realised that the fabric was fully reversible! I hadn't even noticed in the excitement of buying. 

I really wanted to make the most of both sides of the beautiful fabric, so I decided to attempt a fully reversible skirt. I googled for a simple pattern and found this really easy tutorial with a free printable pattern. Unfortunately I didn't have enough fabric to make the skirt as two layers so I was going to need to be creative!

The pattern calls for the skirt to be cut on the straight grain, but there was not enough fabric for this so I removed the centre back seam and cut both front and back pieces on the bias.

It wanted to ensure the skirt was fully reversible so I stitched the panels together with French seams and then top-stitched them flat to ensure the skirt could be worn both ways. 

I cut the front wrap panels into a curve at the edges, and turned up the hem 1cm all the way round, turning the hem under again to create a 0.5cm hem. On the "blue" side of the garment I pinned some black rikrak over the turned hem and top stitched through all the layers close to the edge to finish the hem. 

I used black satin bias binding for the waist and attached two pretty buttons from my stash to finish off. The result is a lovely flippy hem skirt that I can wear right through to summer!