Have you entered my contest to win the sewing book I translated yet ?!!!

My nieces from Reunion island came for a visit, and their mum said she “really liked my daughter’s skirts“. She’s also the one I made that bag for, which she really seems to love (and apparently got tons of compliments on), so I knew I had to make them pretty and funky skirts.

This week-end I packed all my fabrics, sewing machine and various notions, ribbons and buttons to go visit them at my parent’s place. Except I forgot to take the sewing machine with me :-/
Luckily, my mum let me use hers, and her notions and threads: less choice, but I saw it as a way to be even more creative !

I let my nieces choose the fabrics they liked most. Rearranged their choice slightly to get the perfect balance and make the skirts “work”. The pattern of course is my favorite appliquà© skirt, just worked with lighter summer fabrics for once (which I wanted to try anyways! Perfect timing :-D )
The first one was so easy, with a panel cut from a pretty t-shirt with a large face motif. Bright dotted fabric for the edgings, and a family of matryoshkas/russian dolls on one panel… Just perfect !

Then I started working on the older one’s skirt. This started as more problematic, as most of the fabrics she chose were light pinks. Ahem, not enough contrast. I decided to go with darker plum edgings, and when it came to choosing the perfect thread… yellow showed to be my best bet ! Suprising, I know, but it really worked perfectly with the pink and plum.
Except, at the end of the day, I was not happy with that skirt. It just didn’t pop enough. And that kept me awake during the night.

So next morning, we got back to work. And decided to add a removable pocket (= no ripping the actual skirt), and make it reversible even! We played with fabrics and appliquà©s, and ended up with a skirt which can be worn 3 ways: without pocket to see the cute little white kitten, or with the green/black kitten pocket, or the softer pink/green/russian dolls pocket. The bonus: the pocket can also easily turn into a cute little bag !

Now I was happy with both skirts :-)

Oh and in case you were wondering: the cousins had a wonderful time playing together !! :-)