Sewing for Sanity

My studio week was pretty much chewed up by preparations for the surface design workshop I'll be giving at ArtFest beginning Wednesday.  By Saturday morning, every surface was staging area, despite my best efforts to stay organized.

My students will be working with Dharma Trading Company's 100% cotton print cloth, which is good beginning quality fabric at a very reasonable price.  In addition they have a yard of black Kona cotton for discharging experiments.  I put everybody's yardage in brown paper grocery bags and numbered them to avoid confusion over whose is whose.

It's amazing how much stuff I will be schlepping up to the High School!

With even my work table hogged out by boxes of supplies, I decided to squeeze in a sewing day.  I had this great remnant of batik from yardage I purchase in Singapore several years ago.

I wanted to use the border element at the hem, and create an un-gathered look based on my previous top from last week.

I also wanted to change the neck line to a v in front and add to the shoulder width. I used my Sharpie marker and the old Simplicity pattern to make the changes on pattern tissue.

I dropped the neckline lower by an inch in the back...

..and I HAVE to have pockets in the side seams.

Here is a detail of the back, where I added 2 little tucks to account for extra fullness in the skirt which happened because I wasn't paying attention when drafting my pattern.

 Tah Dah - the front!...

...and the back.

Off to the mother-in-law's for Easter dinner.  Happy Easter to all!