SNOW!!!  I have waited since October for snow to fall in this very grey city, and today it was so beautiful!  The flakes were falling in large fluffy clumps as I drove my DD1 to a high school audition.  It was so pretty!Anyways, the real point of this post is a little review of Vogue 8296.  I’ve had this pattern kicking around for years.  I used to have a long denim skirt along the same lines, and when this pattern was released I bought it for when the RTW skirt wore out. I used thrifted Harris tweed and lined it with poly charmeuse.  This is a heavier lining than I’ve used with tweed skirts in the past.  I usually use bemberg but I find that the scratchiness of the tweed (particularly Harris) makes its way through the bemberg.  The charmeuse is the perfect barrier!  The lining is basically an A-line skirt cut on the bias.  Each of the lower skirt sections are sewn as lapped seams.  I wasn’t originally going to sew it up this way, but after shrinking the tweed I thought it would be a different look from anything else I own.  I left the hem unfinished, too.  I don’t know if this will hold up in the long end, but that’s the way it is for now.  I’m really hoping the weave is dense enough to prevent extensive fraying so I don’t have to stitch along the edge of it. I would like a little bit of fraying at the hemline, but not long-scary-thread fraying.

The waistband is reinforced with grosgrain.  I fell stitched the bottom of the ribbon through all layers, just barely catching the fashion fabric like a subtle bit of understitching.  It worked beautifully.

I finished up this skirt last week and wore it twice, but decided that it needed a little something extra.  So I outlined the skirt seams with a dot stitch (aka rice grain stitch) in red DMC embroidery cotton.

And that’s the end of winter skirts around here.  Having all these skirt options has made me realize my closet is extremely limited in the tops department.