FO: New Look 6429

I cut this out and sewed half of it before leaving for Copenhagen. I was finally home long enough to finish this over the weekend, and I wore it to work today. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, even though this was my first real foray into the wacky world of knits (I still haven't finished that other "first knit sewing" project I started -- the style isn't particularly flattering and the jersey has a tendency to roll that it really obnoxious, so it's hibernating).

The pattern was New Look 6429. I picked up the pattern a few months ago after seeing all the great reviews for it, and I'm glad I did because Simplicity is now listing the pattern as being out of print! I made view D, the sleeveless version.

The fabric is a stretch ITY jersey knit from Fabric.com that I grabbed during a sale in March. I bought 2.5 yards at $2.99/yard on sale, and checked out with a 15% off coupon and free shipping for a grand total of $6.87 with tax.

All in all, this pattern wasn't too difficult to sew, even with the knit fabric. The hardest thing was getting my machine to sew over somewhat thick patches (turned over edges on top of seams, for example) but it seems to have turned out fine. I don't have a serger, so all the sewing was done with a zigzag stitch (maybe with a wider zigzag than was actually necessary, now that I look at it) and I graded all seams down and used the overcast foot on my machine to finish the seams. I cut a size 8 and shortened the bottom by 2.75". I left off the facings because I didn't want to deal with them and have seen several other people do this with knits. For the neckline, I stabilized the inside with some pink stretch lace by turning it over once and attaching the lace, then turning it over again and topstitching. I also turned up the bottom hem twice and topstitched. I stabilized the shoulders with some hot pink bias tape because I was worried that they would stretch out from the weight of the fabric. In retrospect, I should have used white because you can kind of see the pink through the white parts of the fabric, but I like the contrast of the pink with the zebra-esque print of the fabric.

I wore this to work today and was quite happy with the swingy-ness of the skirt. It was a nice and cool option for our "non-typical" mid-90s June weather. Ever since I moved here, everyone's been telling me the weather is not typical. If that's true, then I honestly don't know what to expect from Atlanta weather and I've lived here for the past 10 months!