Bad Skirt

I have been accused in the past of posting pictures of my projects in order to make myself look good, and to belittle those who do not have the skills that I do. This is not, and never will be my intention. I firmly maintain that absolutely anyone could learn to sew or knit. It doesn't take some inherent talent you were born with, it just takes the willingness to take the time to learn. And sometimes even those of us who do practise still screw it up. Like my pi shawl that took several tries, or today's project, the skirt that went bad. 

I wanted a cute denim pencil skirt. They seem like a good weekend wardrobe staple to me, a casual alternative to jeans. I had a few yards of denim that I inherited from my grandmother, so it was a fairly low-risk project. All I had to buy was a pattern (Butterick 5566 view C if you are curious) and a zipper. I figured even if I didn't like the first one I had enough yardage left to try again. And that is a good thing because boy-howdy do I not like the first one. 

I think there are several things that went wrong with this skirt. First and foremost is that I picked a bad pattern for my body. Technically the skirt fits, in that the measurements of the waist and hips of the skirt match mine, but the construction of this skirt assumes that the wearer has more hips and less booty. Consequently, I have puffy extra room along my hips and the skirt pulls across my butt. As you can see in the photo below the skirt is trying to ride up because there isn't enough room for my derriere, this is causing unsightly bubbles, and it is also making the hem of the skirt sit unevenly with the back being higher than the front. If I had liked everything else about this skirt I could have fixed that by adjusting the hem, but it doesn't seem worth the effort is a skirt with several other problems. 

I should have taken a picture from the side, because that is where it really looks worst. There is an excess of fabric in the front of the skirt with makes my stomach roll look huge. As soon as I put the skirt on I remembered why I do not like high-waisted skirts/pants on me. I keep thinking they should flatter my figure by making my torso smaller and my legs look longer, but they tend to just make me look fat instead. Although as my boyfriend said it does make my torso look shorter. His first reaction to the skirt was "oh yuck, that's awful" though.

Untucking my shirt did hide most of the fit problems, although I'm back to having a torso that goes on for miles instead of nice long legs. But the point of this skirt was to wear a tucked in shirt to show off the cute detailing around the waist. 

Fit issues aside there are still other problems that you can see in that photo. For example that point at my hip is not my hip, it's the seam refusing to lay flat and thus creating excess bulk. When I make a second skirt, with a different pattern, I think I'll use a flat fell seam in order to force the seams to lay flat, just like a pair of jeans. I think I will also stay stitch the waist as soon as I cut the fabric. I cannot believe how much it ended up stretching while I was trying to sew it, which I'm sure contributed to the fit issues. 

So, even though I hate this skirt, I'm glad I made it because it was a learning experience for sure. I've learned that I need to start paying more attention to patterns that will look good on me, not just grabbing patterns that are cute. I will try again for a denim skirt, but in the meantime I've got a cute floral print linen that is just begging to be made into a dress. 

Mending Jeans

Let me tell you about my favorite pair of jeans. They are Lucky Jeans. They fit like they were made for me specifically. I am literally loving them to pieces. My mom found them at a thrift store and wore them until she couldn't anymore, then she gave them to me and I wore them to work almost every day for ages. Last week I used the essential jean mending method from the blog Create/Enjoy to fix a hole on the right side of the inner thigh, today I sat cross-legged and ripped the left side so this time I took pictures as I fixed it.

Here is the hole in my pants:

Step one was to cut out piece of heavy fusible interfacing (projects like these are a good reason to keep your interfacing scraps) a bit bigger than the hole and ironed it on. 

The next thing I did was sew around the edge of the interfacing. Even though in theory the interfacing is now fused in place, let's be real, that stuff doesn't actually stay very well and you don't want those edges coming loose the first time you wash the jeans.

And then you just stitch back and forth over the hole. You can do this from the right or wrong side of the pants. The first time I used this method I was too lazy to get my jeans out from under the pressure foot on my machine after sewing the edges of my interfacing so I sewed from the wrong side.

Pro tip: try not to sew the leg of your pants shut like I did. If you do, no big deal. Just clip those stitches and re-do that part. 

Here is what it looked like after I finished fixing my goof-up:

And here is the fixed hole from the right side:

I love this way of fixing jeans. It took all of about five minutes, even with me screwing up and stopping to take pictures, and it requires no hand-sewing. I'm telling you, the gal who came up with this is a genius. It's my go-to for extending the life of my jeans.