First sewing project of the year!

 I really wanted to take small steps to reduce my impact on the earth in achievable ways.  So this year i have pledged to make as much of my clothes as i can.  I want to challenge myself and see what i can achieve.  I should say i am a very novice seamstress.  I went on two one day courses years back to make a simple skirt and a simple dress and thats it!  After that i used youtube and books for help.  I have always knitted and mastered crochet too, but never sewing. 
  Why do i want to buy less clothes?  Firstly i want to be less of a consumer.  I'm looking for a more wholesome life full of experience.  I can save the money i waste on clothes and use it in more meaningful ways, like travel, books, art equipment, really enriching stuff that feeds my soul.  I don't want to support cheap clothing producers that pollute the planet and pay their workers next to nothing for what is virtually modern day slavery.  I want no part in people having to leave their babies in the care of others while they live in shoe boxes in the cities and work 18 hours a day for a meagre wage to send home. 
  From and environmental point of view, the figures from www.wrap.org.uk tell us that extending the lives of clothes by just 3 months leads to a 5-10% reduction in the carbon, water and waste footprints, and more than that, 350,000 tons of clothing goes to landfill in the uk every year! 
  So this year i will mend first, make second and thirdly buy from ethical sources if i can.
Here is my first offering of the year (my photo skills leave much to be desired):

A little A line skirt.  I am actually more proud of this than i should be as its pretty crappy sewn but it was supposed to be a smock top from a beautiful japanese sewing book i own.  Thing is, the patterns don't come with seam allowance. I  forgot that bit of information of course.so the size 14 i cut out, when basted together was a small size 12! eek!  No way were my boobs fitting in there.  I either had to chop it to make a skirt or chuck it all together.  So chop it i did.  Of course i then had no pattern to follow.  So the reason i'm so proud of the skirt is that i managed, through the power of google, to work out how to add a waist band and how to add a button band:

This skirt will never win any competitions except maybe the wonky stitching award, but it fits and that, in my book, is a great start!