Sewing the Arielle skirt (Tilly and the buttons)
The Arielle skirt was stuck in my head for a while … so I ended up taking advantage of the Black Friday promo to buy it directly on the Tilly and the buttons website.
To test it, I made a 1st super economical version, with the various brique red fabrics leftovers from my last projects: the cape V9288 and the dress Freya. And with this project ends, normally, my phase “brick color” with an Arielle skirt as red Arielle the little mermaid!
| ITEM | SHOP | QUANTITY | PRICE |
| Tilly and the buttons | 1 | 14,90 € | |
| Brique wool (cape V9288’s fabric leftover) | Mercerine | > 1 m | 0 € |
| Brique milano knit (Freya dress’s milano remnant) | Driessen Stoffen | > 1 m | 0 € |
| Brique lining (cape remnant) | Driessen Stoffen | > 1 m | 0 € |
| Interfacing | Stock | > 1 m | 0 € |
| Covered buttons | Aliexpress | 6 | 0.50 € |
| Button holes | Retoucherie – 5 passage du Prado à Paris | 6 | 3 € |
| Thread | Stock | 0 | 0 € |
| Total | 18,40 € |
The skirt pattern Arielle
Arielle is a pencil skirt or mini skirt with a nice side buttoning. Its high waist and long darts create a body-hugging fit that’s comfortable yet easy to adjust. It exists in a lined version or not.
For this skirt, I made the mini version with the lining (as you may have deduced reading the table above). At the moment, I want to sew more ambitious projects with a better finish.
The pattern board is printed on a 90g paper, solid without any overlapping pieces. The explanations are super clear and easy to follow, this is the trademark of Tilly and the buttons.
The pattern presents:
- front left pannel
- front right pannel
- back pannel
- back facing + interfacing
- front left facing + interfacing
- front right facing + interfacing
- front left lining
- front right lining
- back lining
But, no pockets :_(
If the pattern easily follows my sway back thanks to the darts, I was thinking that I could correct the back length of the skirt … to avoid this effect of the back shorter than the front.
Sewing the Arielle skirt
The sewing doesn’t present any particular difficulty, except perhaps seaming together the two opposite curves of the facing and the lining.
Indeed, the seam allowance of 1.5 cm (quite standard in Anglo-Saxon patterns) does not make easy sewing these curves together. The instructions calls for snipping the seam allowance BEFORE sewing … which opens to me a great potential of mistakes.
This wool has been a pleasure to sew and shape at the steam iron … but it “crumples” when worn and especially at the buttons. I think I sew small snaps >between< buttons to avoid that waves effect.
Otherwise, as for the cape, I was totally unable to make my machine swallow this woolen fabric to make the buttonholes. The project was therefore on hold for several weeks before I went to the retoucherie to make my buttonholes.
Final word on the Arielle skirt
As usual, this pattern of Tilly and the buttons is easy to make and fits well. I’ll keep it preciously in my pattern library to remake it.
In addition, it uses very little fabric and can effectively eliminate some fabric remnants in the stash …
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