in the Nagano region
Hello! We recently spent nearly a month overseas in east Asia, specifically South Korea and Japan. I’ll write a bit more about our trip in a future travel wardrobe post, but for now I’ll just be focusing on the two new things I made to wear for our holiday…
First up! a new mini skirt. I find a little stretchy fabric mini skirt to be an extremely comfortable and practical garment for hiking in a winter environment… which is why I make a new one practically every year, ahem. I’ve actually promised to myself to branch out into different patterns this year but that promise was made after I’d made this, honestly. Because yes, it’s yet another old favourite that pops up here with mind-numbing regularity, the Paprika patterns Jade mini skirt pattern.
I used a bright pink jersey that had been given to me by my friend N when she cleaned out her own stash. I actually already have a pink mini skirt from last year that’s still in very good condition, so I made this new one with a view to dyeing it immediately afterwards. I’d decided upon purple, thus the decision to use a purple zip which I happened to have in my stash too. I’m pretty happy with the very good colour match after the dye-job!
btw, I don’t always put a zip in the Jade but it’s usually a good idea. Also, I always have to substantially change the shape in the fitting stage, bringing in the waist by a good 15cm or so, which necessitated a redrafting of the waistband. Over numerous iterations of this skirt, I have found it a good idea to line/interface the waistband with a non-stretch material for longevity, since otherwise it will eventually stretch out.
looks lumpy here but that’s because of the shaped waistband, which won’t sit flat nicely
I added a cotton pocket inside the skirt, this cut from an old worn out shirt of Sam’s. I’ve found some sort of pocket a useful addition to the skirt pattern previously although I haven’t used this one yet, in spite of wearing the skirt quite a lot already. As it turns out I always wore it with other garments with it that had more convenient pockets so didn’t need it. The Jade pattern is not ideal for pocket addition at all, but I’ve still tried to force one upon it a few times now. I’m confident that it will prove useful in future wears, though.
The other new garment is a T-shirt, made from a blue and white striped jersey also from N. You may recognise it from G’s T-shirt in my previous post. For mine, I used our own Carolyn & Cassie Pinjarra pattern, sizing up because the fabric doesn’t have much stretch. I actually didn’t have much opportunity to take a photo of the T-shirt on our trip because it was rarely warm enough to wear it by itself! plus for some reason taking pictures of my outfits didn’t take a lot of priority in my mind. Is this a good sign? Am I maybe getting more mature?! All pictures featuring the Tshirt are pretty ordinary quality, haha…
Anyway, both these pieces are obviously comfortable and nice to wear, and feel like really good new basics for my wardrobe.
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