sewing along with Unrequited Love

I assure you, it wasn't my love that went unrequited. It was Miss Potter and the sew along theme at The Sew Weekly.

Give me English accents, a panoramic view of the English countryside, and the mere glimpse of an under butler, and you've got me. Practically any period piece produced by the BBC will keep me riveted to the screen, especially if it involves elaborate costumes and manor homes. Throw in a toasting fork and...sigh...rapture.

Miss Potter, the movie, had all these things (except the toasting forks) including unrequited love. Could it get any better? Well, yes, it also had a happy ending. After all the unrequited stuff, of course. I chose this movie because Beatrix Potter was an inspiring figure, but also because I had The Beatrix Skirt pattern in my stash from years ago.

Beatrix fell in love with her publisher. He was a man who believed she was a talented woman, who admired her passions of drawing and painting and writing, and who loved her despite her reputation for being an eccentric. They were secretly betrothed because he was a man "in trade" and was therefore disapproved of by her wealthy, high-society family. But here came the unrequited part (ready your hankies). He died.

(Here is the real Miss Potter wearing a skirt very similar to the one I sewed. The movie stills that I found failed to show anything below the waist and the style of walking skirts that were popular in 1909.)

Beatrix Potter stories were big in our house. Her depiction of animals was charming yet they still exhibited real animal behavior. Squirrel Nutkin had his tail ripped off by an owl (well, he was prancing around and teasing a very large owl) and Tom Kitten was almost made into a roly-poly by rats and eaten. I also admired Beatrix Potter because she lived life on her own terms. Despite the restrictions of what society expected of a woman and her parent's vision of what she ought to be, she forged a unique path. Eventually, after her unrequited love stage, she purchased a farm and lived close to the nature she loved to illustrate. And she did all her farming in a long skirt and tailored jacket.

Which inspired this...

I had intended to have The Husband take some artsy pics (inspired by the awesome photos from The Sew Weekly contributors) of me in the wintry setting of the park. However, the rest of our family decided to crash the photo shoot.

The Facts

Fabric: twill inherited from my Grammy's fabric stash - $0
Pattern: Beatrix Skirt pattern from Sense and Sensibility $15
Year: c. 1909
Notions: zipper $4.99
Time to complete: I truly don't want to think about that
First worn: January 2011
Wear again? Um...maybe. After a long pattern vacation where I will forget all the tears and gnashing of teeth and bad words.

Total Cost: ~$19.99

I'm pleased with the final skirt, and although the pattern design was perfect for a beginner, the instructions were not. The pattern creator glossed over installing the waistband and zipper to concentrate more on the details of sewing a more historically accurate skirt. The errors in construction were 100% my fault entirely. Armed with The Complete Book of Sewing, I muddled through it. There was a point when I sat at my sewing machine and swore for three minutes solid because I had sewn in the zipper a half-inch short of the waistband. When I see my mother I'm going to give her huge puppy-dog eyes and sucker her into ripping it out and installing it the correct way. And the hem...that needs some first aid as well. Like I said, I need a vacation from thinking about this pattern before I attempt it again.

What I do like is that it's warm and has a flattering shape. The twill will wear especially well under the stress of managing a wayward bear. I have no fears of mashed banana staining it or wearing out the knees as I peer under furniture for a wayward barnyard animal (the small plastic kind). I will also be able to dash out to the store or other errands looking like a somewhat presentable human being instead of the harried mother who forgot to brush her hair or double-check her pants for dried, crusty stuff. I hate looking like a cliche, but more often than not I run out of the house looking exactly like one. I think it would be fun to sew this in a silky material for a formal skirt, but that's far off in the unforeseeable future.