Spoonflower Design Swap: Alida Makes

Several light years ago, Stacey from Boy Oh Boy Oh Boy emailed some very talented and design savvy bloggers (and me) to ask if we wanted to participate in a fabric swap.  The catch: you had to design the fabric for your partner.  Naturally I thought I'd be pretty good at designing fabric (spoiler: I'm not) and was delighted and a little scared to be partnered with the amazingly stylish and creative Alida from Alida Makes.  Who then, of course, knocked out this amazing fabric in no time whatsoever:

Those, my friends, are Momongas (Japanese dwarf flying squirrels) carrying umbrellas in the rain. Obviously it is nearly impossible to do this fabric justice, but by jove I tried.

None of your lacklustre boring ol' skaters here.  A Bimaa Skater!

Told you I was going to Bimaa All The Things.

Bimaa-ing your skater is really easy, I just matched them up on the shoulder line and then swapped out the skater neckline for the Bimaa neckline.  The result is a narrower but deeper neckline that fits the Bimaa cowl (and the hood! and the shawl!).

So exciting.

I only had a yard of Alida's fabric so I had to be a bit creative. The skater skirt at 7/8 length was too tall to fit the Spoonflower interlock while leaving enough left over for the bodice and sleeves so I had to shorten the skirt quite considerably.  Once it was shorter, I did slash and spread it for some extra fullness.

Great from twirling.  Omitting the hem and instead adding a band at the bottom gave some of the omitted length back, plus the weight of the band gives the bottom edge some heft.

Thanks so much to Stacey for the Design Swap idea, Alida for the awesome fabric that both Maia and I adore, and Sarah for the Bimaa!  Hop over to Alida's blog to see what she made with the fabric I designed.

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Today is the last full day that the Sew Fab bundle is available (which includes my reversible zippy hoodie in all sizes and Sarah's Bimaa too).  As a designer, I get a portion of the sales made through my site so I really appreciate your support! You can get your hands on it here with my affiliate link.  But if it's the Bimaa that swayed it for you, it'd be so nice if you pop over to Sarah's blog to show her some love.