Cargo Skirt Five Years in the Making

Do you want to know more about the skirt that I'm wearing in my previous post about my ruffle front shirt? Well, read on.

You may remember last year I blogged about a pile of fabric that I found hiding in the corner of my studio. I got quite excited, as one of the pieces of fabric in that pile was a stretch herringbone cotton blend that I had been looking for.

I made my husband and son matching pants from it around 5 years ago. Before you ask, no, I can't seem to find a photo of them wearing their pants together, but I did manage to find a photo of my now 8 year old son wearing his pants when he was 3. As I have no younger male nephews to pass them on to, I gave those pants to my next door neighbour for her sons to wear.

Why can't they stay this small and cute forever?

I feel like telling him to push his pocket linings back in!

When doing the pattern for my skirt, I didn't try to match the boys pants exactly, but kept the major features of fly front and coin pocket on the front, double belt carriers, angled yoke and pockets with welts on the back. As I couldn't put any more seams lower down on the skirt, I added one directly under the back pockets. I was also guided by my original sketch of the pants design, in which I had a seam under the pockets.

Side view

I also had another minor stash bust for the pocket linings. I use about 20cm of a striped shirting fabric that I bought in Hong Kong just over three years ago.

Pocket Lining

I can't stand my skirts to sit on my waist, more on the hip really, so I had a few fitting issues when I started out on this skirt, as I designed my custom made block to fit at the waist and have ease at the hips. The amount of stretch in the fabric didn't help either, so I ended up taking out 1cm (or was it 2cm?) from the CB, and 3.5cm from CF. I had actually finished the skirt before I decided that only-just-holding-onto-my-hips-and-about-to-fall-off-with-one-tug was too loose, so I unpicked the CF and put the zipper in again after cutting some off.

Just a bit loose?

After this experience however (I haven't made many skirts since I made the block about 6 years ago), I'm thinking the block needs to be revisited, so the next skirts will fit without too much effort.

Here's the pants and skirt side by side so you can see how they match, but not quite. You can see that his pants are getting quite worn out. And faded. I've already had to repair the centre back seam a couple of times!

Fronts

Backs

There is still enough of this fabric for either a skirt for my daughter, or a new pair of pants for my son. The skirt sounds like less hard work to me, but I don't tend to make as many things for my son, so maybe he should get some more pants? My biggest issue there is that I haven't made any children sized blocks bigger than a size 5. It's on my to-do list, but I've been putting it off since he turned 5! With my daughter about to hit that same milestone, maybe it's time though.

Which do you think I should do from my leftovers? Mother daughter matching skirts, or father son matching pants?