Alabama Chanin Anna's Garden Fitted Top & Skirt

I made my first Alabama Chanin top four years ago and slowly but steadily I have been adding to my handmade collection. This time I made a matching top and skirt. I already blogged extensively about the process involved here and it includes some helpful info on materials used for the stencil and the sewing. For this post, I am highlighting the finished outfit with some pertinent details included. 

Here is a flatlay of the outfit. 

Front of the Top & Skirt

Back of the Top & Skirt

For this outfit, I layered two fabrics so I could use the reverse appliqué method. I used 100% organic cotton knit fabric purchased from Nina Chicago online store. The inner fabric is in camel and the outer fabric is called ruby red. 

This is the front of the top shown with stencil already painted on. 

Once again I used my favorite stencil, Anna's Garden. 

Here is a look at the stenciled front. I airbrushed it with Createx fabric paint in the color Pearlized Copper. 

For handstitching around the stenciled motifs, I used a variegated cotton thread. This is the Aurifil brand weight 12 in the color "Creme Brûlée" (no. 4150). This was my first time using this thread and of all the cotton threads I have used for my previous projects (that included Coats & Clark, Wawak and Alabama Chanin embroidery thread), I found this the easiest to work with. It hardly twisted and the texture is so smooth and silky!

Photos of work in progress. 

The front of the top after all hand stitching was completed. 

The magic begins! Cutting out the center of the motifs. 

Two front skirt pieces with hand stitching completed. 

Back of the skirt after the center back seam was sewn. 

Magic begins on the skirt!

And now the fun part--photos of the finished garments!

Back view with center back seam.

Front of the skirt has center back seam and waistline has 5/8" foldover elastic. 

1-1/4" self fabric binding on cap sleeves. Sleeves are only made of one fabric layer. 

1-1/4" binding on neckline. 

Skirt left unfinished.

View of inside. In case you're wondering, those knots and threads don't really bother me when I'm wearing the garment!

I really love how my outfit turned out! I cannot wait to begin another project!