Autumn is here. The leaves are turning slowly yellow and although it has been a warm weekend, it’s obvious that summer is over. I will tell you in another post what became of my summer sewing plans, for today, let me tell you, what I am up to right now. I have cut the outer layer of a plaid skirt for fall! If that doesn’t scream autumn sewing to you, I don’t know what will. 
In spring I decided, my wardrobe could need another transitional skirt with pockets like my denim skirt and when I visited the fabric store a few weeks ago, I found the perfect fabric. It’s a lovely pure wool plaid and the first thing I did was throwing it in the washing machine (using the handwash cycle and wool detergent, of course, as I plan on treating the finished garment this way). And I -as some experienced readers may guess- actually learned a couple of lessons this way:
1. Wool may shrink and it’s perfectly probable that it will do so differently for different shades (yes, I understood that in theory somewhere deep down, but now I KNOW, the red stripes shrunk more than the rest, leaving uneven fabric, pressing helped with that, though).
2. If you want to match plaid – buy more fabric (also pretty obvious, but it seems I have to do things to really understand them, reading about it doesn’t count). It’s a pretty wide plaid as you can see and I just thought about not wanting to have more fabric scraps at home… For matching the plaids this tutorial by Tasia has been extremely helpful. I have cut the fabric in a single layer as the pieces were pretty small and few.
And -tadaaa- no. 3 is that: if you combine shrinking and minimum yardage while not giving up on the idea of matching plaids, you are in for some really interesting puzzle work when cutting.
Actually I managed to squeeze out all the skirt pieces from 60cm fabric (pre-shrinking about 5%) and keep the pockets by not cutting the whole pocket facing from the plaid – just the part you will see. Also all facings you don’t see, like the waist band facing, will be cut from lining, too. But it worked out and is matched! I will even have a back box pleat detail so I can get in my bike in it! (And for once I have almost zero scraps lying aroud!)
matching plaid at the pocket facings
and my cheat ;)
In other news: the sweater I have been knitting this summer is finally almost finished. I just have to weave in the ends and block it and then it’s test knitting time over on ravelry! I will tell you when the testknitting is open – so watch this blog if you are interested! It’s not cold enough to wear it yet, but I guess it soon will be. 
So much for today. I hope you are having a nice time knitting and sewing for the changing seasons.
This post is part of Tami’s Amis WiP Wednesday and Ginny’s Yarn Along.
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