Sewist Meetup at Sissinghurst Castle (Me-Made-May Day 25)

No one can argue that the sewing community is a wonderful one to belong to. I find myself very fortunate to be part of such a welcoming and opening group of people. I love meeting up with fellow sewists and chatting about projects and just life in general. So it’s to no surprise that I jumped at the opportunity to meet up with Claire. We met at the OWOP cocktail meetup.  She casually mentioned she lived at a castle and I basically invited myself over. I can be a bit shy at times but not enough to miss out hanging with a lovely sewist at her castle!

Okay. So Claire doesn’t live in the castle. As a gardener for the Sissinghurt Castle grounds she lives in the most adorable cottage ever.

Here we are looking adorable in our me-made outfits. She’s wearing a sweet swiss dot Sorbetto and an awesome Ginger skirt. I’m wearing my new self-drafted circle skirt.

But before I go on about the skirt. Check out the grounds she calls work and home.

Can you imagine this place being at your  front door?

After a lovely guided tour around the famous gardens, Claire took my friend and I back to her cottage for some tea and delicious carrot cake. She even gave us some cake for the train ride home. It was just as tasty the second time around. Thanks so much for the awesome hospitality, Claire!

Now for the skirt. I drafted a full circle skirt using two tutorials: Patty Snug Bug’s Circle Skirt calculator and Casey’s Circle Skirt Sew-along posts. For the waistband I just used the one I drafted for my gathered skirt. For a full skirt I used about 2 meters of cotton twill fabric. It was 60 inches wide. Any less and I would have had to sacrifice length and I wasn’t too sure if I wanted to do that. In hindsight I’ll make a shorter one next time.

I do love how the skirt swishes about as you move. I can easily imagine myself swing dancing with Greg while wearing it (with shorts of course!).  I definitely think this skirt will get a lot of wear.

My favorite part of the skirt is the slashed open zipper. The skirt has no seams so I was quite curious about how I was going to insert a zipper. Casey’s tutorial helped with that immensely.

Another Me-Made day completed! Five more to go!