Just in time to start in on the Red Velvet Cake Sewalong beginning tomorrow, I finally finished up the Hummingbird skirt from the last Cake Sewalong. If you were following the Flickr group for the Hummingbird sewalong, there was a picture of the top being worn by my dress-form (who should have a name, but doesn’t), but as the summer heated up, I couldn’t garner any enthusiasm for putting together the skirt.
I made the flounced version of the skirt. It has a pencil skirt look, but is much easier to walk in than the usual pencil skirt. The skirt fabric is a waffle-texture wool suiting (thus the lack of enthusiasm for summer wearing). The top is made of Laguna Cotton from Fabric.com. It has great stretch and recovery with enough weight to have no show-through. I finished the top over the summer, but didn’t start wearing it until I finished the skirt. I know the shirt fabric will wear well because I had made Guinevere a t-shirt out of the left-overs (which I don’t seem to have pictures of) and it’s been worn and washed all summer and has held up very nicely.
The Hummingbird skirt is put together very interestingly. For this make, it was especially interesting because I had cut it out in June and I lost about 20 pounds before I got it put together. There was a lot of taking in the seams as I put it together. When I make another version of this skirt, I’ll have to start all over with measuring/sizing.
When I went to wear this today, I found a massive gap in my wardrobe. I just don’t have the right thing to wear over this outfit. A black cardigan or jacket works ok, but not great. I don’t have any sweaters or jackets in the right shade of tan, brown or beige. An asparagus-green colored corduroy jacket was the option I decided on for today, but it wasn’t what I wanted to wear, thus was left off for pictures. I need to pull out the leftover fabric from the skirt to see if there’s enough left to make some kind of jacket.
On the knitting front, Aunty Laura had been telling me all about how terrifically cold her office is and how essential multiple clothing layers, long-sleeves, and hot tea are at all times. So I pulled out the leftover yarn from one of Guinevere’s sweaters and made her some fingerless mitts. 
These are the Parnussus mitts. The pattern is a free download on Ravelry. The above picture shows the back hand cable. The next picture is the palm side, all plain other than the zany colored yarn I used.
I’ve got so, so many projects I want to get to, including meeting my stash-busting pledge before the end of the year, a project from a book for The Monthly Stitch November theme, something(s) for the Grunge Sewalong, Cake Red Velvet Sewalong makes, a plus-size pattern pyramid make (which will mean a giveaway) and suddenly all of my children are 3 inches taller than they were last month and going to need new clothes. At least when the kids are growing and really do need new clothes, (not to mention my own size changes over the past few months) I don’t have to feel guilty about spending some time sewing.
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