Friday 12 July 2013

A Twirly Skirt

Last week I had a disappointing week, in terms of sewing. I had wanted to get started on the Colette Hawthorn sewalong but once again I seemed to run out of time everyday. I couldn't even squeeze in a measly 30 minutes of sewing. However, I did get my PDF pattern all taped together and ready to go. So when the weekend arrived and I had a bit more time to play with you'd think i'd get cracking on with it, but no. I decided to make this instead:




 All this hot weather had left me longing for a cool and breezy skirt. Something I could knock out in the limited time I had available between school fetes and rocket launches (true!). Initally I was going to make another Miette but I couldn't place the linen fabric I had in mind. Lost in the depths of my fabric storage.

In my search I came across this Denyse Schmidt fabric that i'd had for ages and thought it would be pretty as a fifties style full skirt.

I got my fabric measurements from the tutorial on the By Hand London blog, then did my gathers using the dental floss trick, which is by far the easiest way to gather I think.
 
 I didn't have an appropriate zipper, invisible or otherwise, but did find this 2" wide black elastic to use as a waistband.

Having sewn it all together and given it a beautiful invisible hem I tried it on and was rather underwhelmed. Firstly, it was just too gathered at the waist and secondly the length was all wrong, sorry forgot to take pictures. I'd based the length on one of my favourite RTW dresses but somehow the length just didn't work with this style.

So, out came the seam ripper, off came the elastic and off came 3 inches of fabric from the waistline, therefore leaving my lovely hem intact!

Then instead of gathers I did this...


I don't know if these are pleats or tucks. There was no science behind it, I just eyeballed it and it worked out okay. I certainly prefer the look of it this way than with the gathers. There was one major mistake I made though. Obviously when you have gathers the fabric stretches nicely with the elastic, making it easy to take the skirt on and off. With these pleats or whatever they are, not the case!! For once I am very thankful to have a small bottom as I can just about squeeze in and out of it.

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