The Rambo Project gets girly.

If you've been hanging out in blogland lately, then you've probably already heard the scoop about The Rambo Project, by Seamstress Erin. Basically, she has the coolest friend ever, who had an in with a costume department, and handed over some old costumes from Rambo III! Awesome, right?!! She sent around a few turbans that were worn in the actual movie by the terrorist bad guys, and our challenge was to turn our turbans into wearable garments.

And here is mine! Can you spot the turban?

Here's a hint... My turban started out as a relatively small piece, only around 10 inches wide and maybe a yard long. The stripes were all concentrated on one end, and were a bit irregular, so that added to the cutting challenge. I really wanted to maximize the stripes!

I decided to highlight the stripes by making them the focal point of the yoke of the Sewaholic Gabriola maxi skirt, which is totally made for stripes!

I only had enough stripe for the front yokes, so the back is the solid taupe that made up most of the length of the turban. And hey, no stripe matching at the side seams!

I did match up the stripes at the front yoke, which was actually a bit tricky, since the turban fabric was weirdly stretchy and also a bit irregular. I persevered though, and I am glad I did!

Since clearly I was not going to get an entire skirt out of the teeny shreds of turban I had left after cutting the yoke, I knew this was going to require a second fabric. But these aren't colors that are dominant in my wardrobe, so at first I really didn't know where I wanted to go with it. I decided to just drape the turban over my fabric shelves and see what worked. It fell on this floral, which I wouldn't have thought of, but the colors are perfect.

So I pulled out the floral and found that it is a stretch linen with roughly the same stretch and weight as the turban fabric! What are the odds! This fabric came in a mystery bundle from FabricMart. Such a win with this one! I did have to shorten the skirt a bit, since I only had 1 3/4 yards of my perfect floral linen. The end result, after taking of 6 inches at the cutting stage and then a few more when I evened the hem is a slightly above ankle length that I really like. I made this for kicks, but I am going to wear the heck out of it. And make more this length.

So, after the skirt was made, I realized that I had no tops to go with it. Fortunately, another FabricMart mystery bundle (can you tell I LOVE those?), had provided me with this lovely teal ITY, which is exactly the same color as the teal flowers in the linen print. Since Heather has been teasing us with all her lovely Nettie bodysuits, I decided to try my hand at one. But I didn't have the heart for PDF assembly, so I went with a pattern I already had, Jalie 2105 (now OOP).

Since the Jalie pattern is for a leotard, I did have to make a few adjustments. I left the crotch seam open and installed a snap placket there, and instead of elastic in the neckline, I used a self fabric band.

The low, scooped back makes me feel like a ballerina. A super sexy ballerina! The one thing that I would do different here, for next time would be to move the snap placket forward. It's placement is a bit, ahem, inconvenient as it is, although it is still comfortable to wear.

Overall, I'm pretty thrilled with my girlification of Rambo! Be sure to head over to Seamstress Erin's blog to check out the other ways that creative sewists have given new life to these old costumes.

2 for 1: Sewaholic Gabriola skirt and Burdastyle Liz blouse

My other warm weather staple, aside from knit dresses, is maxi skirts.

And the maxi that is the current darling of the sewing world is Gabriola. And I can see why! I usually take a bit of convincing before I jump on a new pattern, but as soon as I saw this one, I knew I had to make it. It's so graceful and swishy! And the yoke seaming is both ingenious, as all the shaping is done with the yoke pieces, but also beautiful. Sadly, I used a print that conceals the seaming (This turned out to be a good thing - more on that in a moment) so you can't see the lovely seam lines of the yoke, but the shaping is divine.

She makes me want to dance. The fabric is a drapey, soft rayon challis from FabricMart in a purple leopard print. Because we should all have some purple leopard in our lives.

But alas, all was not rainbows and sunshine as I constructed Gabriola. This is no fault of the pattern, which is divine. Had I followed instructions and cut correctly the first time, there would have been no tale of woe to tell. Sadly, direction following is not my forte.

This wonderful, swirly skirt is composed of panels - three in front and four in the back. The side panels are the same front and back, and you are instructed to cut four of them. I noted that fact in my head, and thought as I was tracing that perhaps I should trace an extra side panel, so that I could just lay out the pieces and cut, rather than having to remember to reposition the piece. Sadly, lazy past Katie did not trace an additional piece, so it was left to my faulty memory, which remembered to cut 4! Yay!

Unfortunately, I cut 4 back panels, which are narrower than the side panels by a significant margin. And which error I did not recognize until I had already sewn the too narrow panels to the center front panel. And serged them. There was only a teeny 1/3 yard of fabric left - not enough to recut the panels, but by piecing the remaining fabric into 3 1/2 inch wide strips, I was at least able to get the width I needed at the hip, so that the skirt fit onto the yoke. Sadly, this means my skirt is not so swishy and lush as the pattern intends.

I can't really tell, and the print hides the piecing. I made a straight size 6, without alterations, save one. For the closure, instead of a zipper and button, I extended the zipper up through the waistband, eliminating the button. If you choose to do this, you'll want a longer zipper than the pattern calls for. An 11-14" should do you. I have a 9" zipper here, and I can *just* squeeze it over my hips.

Invisible zipper is invisible. And my seam matching makes me happy. It is surprisingly easy to match up all these points. Don't be afraid. This skirt is SO worth the (very minor) trouble.

As I was planning this skirt, I realized that I really don't have a blouse that works with it. I wanted something simple and basic, so as not to fight with the skirt. I chose the Liz blouse, from Burdastyle. I made it here in pink swiss dot.

At the time, I didn't really like that first version, but I wear it a lot and it is a great basic. For this one, I used a piece of ?tablecloth? that was given to me by a friend. It acts like a cotton blend, but it has a cool slubby texture and looks linen-like. It's a bit sheer, so I wore it layered over my Sammy Cami.

Instead of the madarin collar on the pattern, I drafted a back neck facing, and skipped the collar altogether.

Overall, I think this pattern is a huge winner. It was fairly simple to sew (as long as you pay attention to the panels) and it is gorgeous and shapely. I'll be making it again for sure. In fact, I'm already planning the next one...