Made By A Fabricista (And Fabric Describer!): Snow Day Pinafore

Hi everyone! I’m Kayla, one of the fabric describers here at Fabric Mart. But today I’m coming to you from the blog! I made this Gambit Dress from Mood Fabrics (shh don’t tell) in a small plaid cotton. This fabric actually never went up online! We bought out a store in Scranton and got a bunch of smaller bolts of fabric. These bolts went out into our retail store! Our retail store has a whole bunch of racks  of fabric that range from $1-$4, and right now we have a $5 wool rack. The fabric I grabbed was on the $3.99 rack! Because the store fabric tends to be smaller quantities and leftover online fabric, we typically don’t get information on content. A quick burn test told me it was indeed cotton!

I was originally aiming for a wool for this project, but knew the cotton would be a little bit easier to work with and maintain. One of the sides is brushed, which I decided to use as the wrong side. 

With my fabric washed and dried I got to work on the pattern. I hadn’t used a pattern printed from the web before and thought lining up all the pages was a bit tricky. But I got it taped and cut and went to work on the skirt!

Hm. Well. Didn’t consider that.  But that’s ok! As the lovely Bernadette Banner would say, “piecing is period”, so let’s try to piece that bit on. I folded back the pattern (leaving extra room for seam allowance).

Flipped the pattern for the piece, using only the best pattern weight I had available. 

And cut out so many skirt panels and the bodice.

I cut those extra bits on the selvedge, so I didn’t feel the need to finish them off. I did do French seams on the rest of the skirt!

The sewing up of this piece is fairly straight forward. Except for the armscyes. The actual written directions are pretty vague and I could not figure out how I was supposed to do them. “Fold the raw edges of your armscyes inward 1/2″ and press. With the folded seam allowances together, pull the armscyes to be partially inside out to sew along the pressed fold.” Partially inside out? Completely lost on me. I scoured youtube looking for videos of other people making this dress and the few I found conveniently didn’t discuss finishing these off. Trying not to get bogged down I decided to just fold in the seam allowance and top stitch them. Not as clean as whatever wizardry Mood used but it gets the job done!

All that’s left is to attach the bodice to the skirt, insert the zipper, and hem! Fabric Mart got in a ton of invisible zippers in all sorts of colors from that store buy out, so I was able to snag the perfect zipper. 

(A little birdy told me we might be doing zipper bundles for the website soon, so keep an eye out!)

And it’s done! I’ve got a couple fit issues in the bust area but since I intend on wearing shirts and sweaters under this I’m not too concerned. I’d rather it be a little baggy. The skirt is full and beautifully swooshy. I’ll definitely be using the skirt pattern for other things. My pieced skirt isn’t invisible but I think it blends in pretty well! Definitely shows that this piece was hand made, and in my opinion not in a bad way!

If you’re ever in the southeastern PA area and want to visit us, the retail store is open Monday-Friday 8a-4:30p! It’s the same building where we store all the online fabrics, and where your orders are cut and shipped! Come see and touch all the wonderful fabrics we have in, and find your next project hidden in the fabric racks!

KAYLA  | @nebulanovem

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You can find similar fabrics by shopping the following categories: COTTON.