I’m completely obsessed with the A Stitch in Time books by Jane Waller/Susan Crawford, and the number of finished objects from them reflect on that obsession. My only problem is that I don’t have suitable seperates to wear with my vintage jumpers! If I don’t want to show my belly to everyone, that is. I don’t, so most of my trousers and skirts are out of the question. A vintage skirt with its higher waistline seemed to be the obvious solution.

When I first looked at Burda Style’s Vintage edition (in German, but there’s a slideshow), the Lola skirt wasn’t the first pattern that met my eye. But as the idea of a pencil skirt as a companion piece to my vintage sweaters took hold in my imagination, I found myself coming back to it. It’s a simple pattern with only two pattern pieces. It’s lined, but otherwise there’s not much to it difficulty-wise.

The turquoise fabric is from my Stoffmarkt Holland haul. I had the idea that I’d use it to make a wearable muslin so I could make the “real” Lola skirt with the grey fabric I bought together with it. But then I started sewing and had so much fun that I tried to be as accurate as possible and painstakingly handsewed a lot of the seams to avoid visible seams. (My best handsewing is still pretty poor handsewing, as you can see looking at the hemline in the above picture, but I’m hoping a good ironing won’t make it as obvious. Sorry for not ironing, by the way. I hate ironing.)

I’d like to gush about this skirt, because I was absolutely prepared to unreservedly and unabashedly love it, but no. I do, in fact, have some reservations! I think it’s obvious that the skirt doesn’t fit me very well. I cut out a size 40; turns out my belly and butt don’t want to be contained by a size 40! They’re opinionated like that. It worked when it was just the fabric, albeit barely, but once I added the lining the game was over.

The lining was a gift from Neko of NF Fantasy. A friend’s mother had given her a whole stash of fabric for free. She normally only needs unicoloured fabric for her cosplays, so I had free pickings among the rest! I picked this blue-orange floral fabric. However, later I realized it had this weird, plastic texture that put me off of this fabric for a while. Preparing for the sewing of this skirt, I realized I needed lining and thought using something from my stash instead of buying something new would be a fabulous idea! I still really like the look of it in combination with the turquoise, but it has about zero stretch and that doesn’t make my belly happy.

In a nutshell, my Lola skirt gets a very muted “yay”. I really like it in theory, but the execution was somewhat lacking in belly-and-butt-related areas. If I’m indeed going to make a grey Lola, I either need to lose a few kilos or grade up the pattern (which is probably the easier option). I want to shorten the hem as well. It looks good from behind, but from the front it hits my legs at a really awkward spot. All in all, I don’t consider Turquoise Lola a fail, but let’s just say there’s space for improvement, and that’s where Grey Lola comes in (hopefully)!