Pink Denim – Challenge accepted!

Hello! This is my very first post here on The Monthly Stitch, so I think I should introduce myself first: I am a girl in her middle to late 20ies, living in Switzerland but am originally from Germany. I studied Art History with a special stress on textile arts and am working on my PhD at the moment. I have been sewing since my teens, starting with goth- and punk-styles, later I dipped into historical sewing and now I am sewing nearly everything from historic and vintage patterns to contemporary garments. I do run my own blog, which I limited to historical or vintage projects and antiques of every kind. I joined The Monthly Stitch because I liked the idea of having a group with which I can exchange experiences apart from historical sewing while the challenges will hopefully help me to sew more contemporary designs (but if a vintage project would match a challenge I plan to show it here, too). At this point I would like to say thanks to Annie, because it was on her blog I first spotted the button and decided to join. I am very glad to be part of it and love to browse through all the beautiful projects here. So much about me, now about the challenge: When I read that the first challenge was “denim” I was a little thwarted in my enthusiasm. I have so many fabrics and didn’t want to buy anything new, especially because I do wear very little denim. I did remember though a leftover of pink denim in my stash. The image that comes to my mind when I think of denim is of course blue. Because of this I didn’t want to stretch the rules already for the first challenge, designating a pink twill as denim and therefore matching the given task. But when a little later the second challenge “pink” was proclaimed, encouraging the participant maybe to even combine both challenges searching for pink denim, I knew what I had to do 🙂 I chose a skirt pattern from Burda easy fashion-magazine, issued march 2007 (the pattern is that old that I was unable to find neither a technical drawing nor photos of the skirt). I had already made this skirt in april 2012, from blue cotton with an embroidery at the hem. The leftovers of this exact fabric I used as a contrasting fabric now, because I feared an all pink skirt may be a little too much. I am really happy with the result, though the different structure of the two fabrics caused some problems.The most obvious one is how it shifted when I inserted the zipper. But because this was already the second try I decided I would be content with this very little flaw. The facing on the hem is worked like a false hem, only inside out. I really liked it when I was done with sewing, but I had the feeling it could need a tiny bit of embellishment. Only days before I had read one line from a french poem that I very liked and decided to embroider it above the blue facing on the hem. Forgive this blurry picture, I hope you can read it. It sais “Mon cœur vaincra sans coup férir”, translated “My heart will win effortlessly” and is the last line of the poem “The spy” (“L’espionne”) by Guillaume Apollinaire. The slit in the centre back I secured with an arrow head. I hope you like it, see you soon, coracaecilie (some of you might know me as ette from my blog. Unfortunately this name was already taken so I had to chose another one)