Poppy Skirt

Visiting New York in 2013, I arranged to meet a volouteer guide through Big Apple Greeter. Amazing experience. 

I was essentially on my own during the day as my husband was at a conference, and Angelina, my Big apple Greeter, took the trouble before I arrived to engage with me by email and find out EXACTLY what my interests were. From a starting point (on the online form) or "history, culture, architecture", we ended up shopping for fabric, visiting Ralph Lauren's flagship store, visiting the Frick, thrift shopping, and having my hair cut by "Celebrity Stylist, Antonio Soddu":

But more importantly, Angelina took me to B&J Fabrics, where I found this:

I decided on a straight-ish skirt pattern, using the Easy Pleated Skirt pattern from So Sew Easy via Craftsy. The pattern is designed for softer fabrics than my cotton fabric, so I wouldn't use this pattern again unless I had a softer, more drapey fabric.  

Now, where did I stash that fabric? What?! Your stash isn't kept in window-faced A4 expandable envelopes?

How it turned out:

Pockets in red fabric for contrast:

Raw fabric edges finished with bias thanks to stash of bias from Grandmothers' sewing box:

Nice job on the invisible zip:

Funnily enough, my favourite designer also had a skirt with a poppy design fabric: