My Favorite Winter Things Skirt

In December last year, I was inspired by a friend to make a Christmas themed skirt. After looking through literally every single the winter and holiday themed cotton prints at Fabric.com, I settled on a print that is not directly Christmas themed. That way I can wear it all through the winter!

Making the skirt fulfilled one personal goal while simultaneously breaking another. The first goal was that when purchasing fabrics a garment should be made right away, as I did with my winter wool skirt. The other goal was to go away for the holidays without any sewing or knitting project in order to give my wrists a break. But I was so excited about my fabric that I took it with me and started hand sewing the skirt anyway, in a low key way. I didn’t finish it on the trip, but I finished it soon after returning home. At that point, I just wanted it done, so I finished it up mostly by machine.

I decided to take the pictures on the only really snowy day we’ve had here so far this winter. We’d had a storm the night before with about 6″ of fresh snow that was just begging to be played in and have this skirt as a companion.

I didn’t have anyone to take pictures for me, so out I went to explore the area around my house, finding random objects to support my phone (trash can, bleachers…) and using the self timer. I made a stand for my phone out of a cardboard box and it worked pretty well once I found something heavy enough to anchor the base. As a result of me taking pictures by myself, I have lots of pictures and lots of bloopers, as well as more far away shots than normal, as I wasn’t able to use the zoom feature with the timer.

I wound up having lots of fun playing in the snow by myself. I bundled up in multiple pairs of fleece lined tights, a wool sweater, and my new carriage boots, amongst other things. The boots did great in the ankle deep snow! My feet were nice and warm and the snow brushed right off (I did spray them with stain/water repellant ahead of time).

The skirt makes me smile, hence the name of this post. Penguins and polar bears are some of my favorite things, so what could be better than these silly guys having winter fun–skating, sledding, and skiing! Plus, they’ve got winter accessories and fox friends (and igloos!). Some days just need the extra boost of silly. I like to think that the skirt is fun, not juvenile…

Regardless, I enjoy it. It’s just two widths of 44″ wide cotton seamed into a tube with a waistband and an invisible zipper. The pleating pattern was stumping me, because I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, but I went looking through Lily’s creations at Mode de Lis (since she often makes such lovely things out of cottons) and decided I liked the pleating pattern of her flamingo dress, so I copied it–flat in front for about 6″, then knife pleated towards the back around each side until center back when the two pleating directions meet. And I like it! It’s different than my other skirts. (She’s got lots of closeups of the pleating pattern, if my explanation makes no sense to you. I would normally have taken pictures of the pleating, but I couldn’t do it myself and I didn’t think pictures of the skirt flat would do it justice. The snowy background is essential!)

I had hoped to have a winter fun day with friends this weekend, but we have no snow, so I though this post would be perfect to remind me that I did take the time to get outside and have some fun in the snow the last time we had some.