A Tilly and the Buttons Arielle Skirt - in bright YELLOW!!!

Baby it’s cold outside… So why the hell would we put on a skirt? Well, because it’s bright yellow and fun!

But let’s start at the beginning. You know with me you always get a little back story on my garments, fabrics and patterns. If you’ve ever met me in person, you know I looooove to talk, haha.

Know your colors

Have you ever taken the time to really think about your wardrobe and what you expect to get from your clothes? I did (a great book to guide you would be Anushka Rees’ book ‘The curated closet’; it is available in German as well btw) and I whichever guide I chose it always brought me back to the same colors. You can even check out my mood board on pinterest and it pretty much shows you all the colors I love to wear. One of them is bright yellow, not neon not mustard just regular lemon yellow.

The Arielle Skirt

So when I was in beautiful Lucca a year ago and stumbled into a fabric shop (ok, I didn’t find it by accident I actually did a lengthy google search but don’t tell my partner) I found this beeeeeautiful bright yellow piquee fabric. Thanks to the weave it has a quite a bit of give and lends itself greatly for a skirt. I bought myself 1.3m of it since I already knew exactly that I wanted to make an Arielle Skirt by Tilly and the Buttons. And yes, I shamelessly copied the yellow skirt on the packaging. But in my defense the skirt would be yellow either way. And just so you know I will make skirts in all “my” colors 🙂

From the basic pieces you are free to make any lenght skirt you desire and have two basic options. With my 1.3m I only had enough fabric for a miniskirt but that was fine.

Cutting out is fairly easy thanks to the fantastic instruction booklet. I must admit I am now at a sewing level where I don’t have to follow the instructions bit by bit but I ALWAYS peek through the instructions before I begin a project especially if I can’t envision how the garment will come together from looking at the pieces.

So just follow along and make sure you pay close attention to the grainline and you will be fine.

…and some pictures to guide you!

All the skirt pieces sewn togethter with the darts already in place. Needs some ironing though…

Facing and lining pieces. You can make this skirt unlined but if you want to wear tights or leggigns with it I strongly recommend a lining.

The lining of the skirt will not be fully sewn in just at the top and the sides so you’ll need to hem the lining as well.

Join the facing and the lining

Understitch the seamallowance to the facing.

I used my trusted walking foot to sew this skirt because the fabric had quite a bit of structure and was stretchy.

Understitching details from the inside

Join the facing/lining to the main fabric at the waist and the sides and understitch the waistband.

You can finish the hem by slipstitching it to the main fabric by hand or just turn it up like I did and stitch it down. You can barely see the stitches from the right side.

And this it was it looks like with the lining on top. The lining is not stitched down.

I use this fabulous sewing gauge to evenly space my buttons or buttonholes (you could also use it for pleats, etc.)

I made my buttonholes with my automatic buttonhole foot and sewed the buttons on by hand (I need to get the buttonfoot because sewing on buttons annoys me so much).