Just Call Me Scarlett

When I was about 12 years old I read “Gone With The Wind” for the first time. By the time I was 14 I’d probably read it six or seven times. I loved Scarlett O’Hara. She was stubborn, enterprising and she wasn’t about to let her home and family down, even in the most difficult times.

She was the complete and total opposite of me. But, hey. . .even shy, bookish girls could dream, couldn’t they??

I loved the part in the book when she had an opportunity to go to a ball and see Rhett Butler in order to convince him that the plantation was doing fine. She didn’t have any money to buy a decent dress so the ever-resourceful Scarlett took down the green velvet drapes and sewed her own dress! Of course, that’s been the object of so much parody it’s almost a cliché but I still love Scarlett.


This weekend I pulled my own Scarlett O’Hara.

I’ve been wanting to sew again. It’s been YEARS since I’ve spent much time at the sewing machine. Since we finally finished the craft room in our new house it was time to indulge myself.

I’m a skirt girl in the summertime so I thought that would be an easy place to start. With the help of this book and a used tablecloth that I thrifted from the Etcetera Shop in Bluffton, I whipped this up!


Seriously! The tablecloth was $2! The thread, zipper and bias tape were about $3. That makes my new skirt a bargain at less than five bucks!



I added custom made pockets with buttons from my stash!


The really cool part is that the book teaches you to sew without purchasing patterns! You simply measure your body and translate those measurements into cut pieces. A skirt, custom fit to ME!

There are fifteen other skirt styles in the book. I’m excited to try several of them!

Better lock the doors! There might not be any curtains that are safe this summer!