Gathered Skirt

Today I thought I would do something a little different and finally move on from wedding related projects. I only have a couple more to talk about, and frankly, they can both wait. Instead, I thought I would talk about a skirt I finished recently.

I had some leftover poly-rayon "linen like" fabric from Jo-Ann's. It is nowhere near as nice as real linen, but it's also half the cost and doesn't have to be shipped to me. The color is much closer to Robin's egg in real life. I wanted to play with my ruffler foot and thought this rectangle would be perfect.

So first I cut out a waistband, then I cut the remaining fabric in half and sewed the two rectangles together using a french seam. Because of that, the skirt is a tad shorter than I would normally wear, but I wasn't sure how much fabric I would need and I didn't want to run out.

Next, I ran my length of fabric through my gathering foot. I set it to pleat the fabric every 6 stitches. I think I would have preferred more gather, but again, I wasn't sure how much fabric the gathers would actually eat up. 

After I gathered all the fabric I attached the waistband. I did so by lining up the center of the waistband with the french seam on the skirt, that way I could attach the zipper to the other side and have both seams be centered. (The waistband started off three inches wide, I folded up half and inch on either side and interfaced the whole thing)

After I sewed the waistband to the right side of the fabric I cut off the remaining fabric at both ends and attached the zipper. I used a clean seam to finish the seam on the zipper side. 

The skirt is cute enough and I had fun playing with the ruffler foot. The whole thing was a bit fast and dirty, for example, I machine finished the hem, although I still hand tacked the waistband to the wrong side to keep my stitches from showing on the right side.I also didn't measure a darn thing, which is why I'm not calling this a tutorial. But hey, the skirt only took about two hours to finish, I will wear it (actually I'm wearing it right now which is why I thought to write up a blog post about it) and now I want to play with the ruffler foot some more. If you have never used one, look them up on youtube. They are crazy looking feet.

Sometimes the Fabric Speaks

On Saturday I made an a-line skirt. I ended up having to draft the pattern for it myself because when I looked through my stash of patterns every skirt that I had was very full, but the flower pattern on my fabric had really clear verticle directionality that just wouldn't work with a circle skirt, at some point somewhere on the skirt I would have ended up with sideways flowers. It's hard to see in the picture, but the flowers all have stems.

I'm glad that I realized that before I started cutting out skirt pieces.

I was going to write something up about how I drafted the pattern, but I forgot to take pictures of that part of the process. The skirt was pretty simple, basically just the front and two back pieces. I made a facing, rather than do a waistband. I used french seams on the side seams and a clean seam for the back seam with the zipper. Because I drafted it myself I gave myself very generous seam allowances, The back I used a 1" SA so I could turn over the edge of the fabric and still have plenty to work with while sewing in the zipper.

I did end up having to finagle the fit a little at the end, it was good through the hips, but a little loose at the waist. Either my math was bad, or my measurement. I'm not sure which.

All in all, I am really pleased with my finished skirt. 

I had a heck of a time taking pictures though because it was super windy. 

Also, I love this outfit, everything I am wearing here I made myself, and that is a really incredible feeling. I talked about the sweater here, the collared shirt here, and the cami under that shirt here. I'm also wearing a rayon slip that I know I made within the last year, but that I apparently never bothered to write about, so it looks like I've got another post about my underwear coming up.

How Not to Make a Pleated Skirt

I swear this is my last post about the weekend at the Wooden Boat Festival. I wanted to keep my boat themed outfits going so I wore my t-shirt with anchors on it. I made the t-shirt ages ago, but the skirt was one I had only recently finished.

When I started the skirt I had intended to make a tutorial on how to make a pleated skirt, but I pretty much did absolutely everything wrong, so instead I'm calling this how not to make a pleated skirt. 

 First: fabric choice. I used a mid-weight linen from fabric-store.com. I chose linen for a couple of reasons:
 1) I thought because it wrinkles easily it would hold a crease for the pleats. WRONG. The pleats were totally invisible, like, 30 minutes after I pressed them in. The wrinkles stayed just fine though.
2) There is a dress I want to make that incorporates pleats and before I used up four yards of linen on it I wanted to know if my finished object (FO) would look any good. I've now learned not to use linen for that dress.
3) I figured even if the linen didn't hold the pleats I would still end up with a cute, dirndl looking skirt, so it as a fairly low-risk experiment.

I will say that this linen is absolutely scrumptious. I love it. And I was at least right that even though the skirt didn't come out the way I envisioned I do still like the FO. Next time though I will skip the pleating and just gather the waistband like I did for my pink skirt.

So, I cut out a rectangle of fabric, carefully making sure that it was on grain and started marking my pleats at the top. Those white lines are 1/2 inch apart.

And here I'm about half way through gathering all the pleats. There ended up being 52 pleats. I pressed them all down once they were pinned. And this is where I stopped taking pictures because things started going wrong. 

My fabric managed the slip off grain, so when I sewed in my pleats they looked crooked. Bummer. I also sewed them down four inches and then realized that it looked ridiculous and unflattering, 2 inches would have been plenty. I solved that my nixing the waistband. Instead, I just folded over my pleated section. The pleats made the fabric plenty stiff and stable, so I didn't bother with interfacing or anything. That part actually went rather well. 

A note on zipper installation: linen unravels like crazy, so I gave myself a full inch of seam allowance for the zipper and did a clean seam finish before installing the zipper.

I had wanted the skirt to sit a couple inches below my waist and come to my knees. But it ended up too small to sit that low. I tried adding fabric, but I added too much, then realized the couple inches I needed to add looked ridiculous so I took it back off and just decided to wear it at my waist. That's the fashion now anyway. It's also shorter than I wanted because I'm wearing it high, and I lost two inches doing the waistband. My butt isn't hanging out though, so I can live with it. In fact, I think it's still longer than similar skirts I've seen in stores, and again this makes it more in keeping with current fashion. 

All in all, even though everything went wrong I'm still happy with the FO. It'll look cute in the fall/winter with tights, or in the spring/summer without which was part of my hope. I probably won't make a skirt this way again, but at least this one worked out alright.

One Last Knit Skirt

I have to wear jeans for work (going up and down ladders in skirts just doesn't seem like a good idea to me) but if I'm not at work I live in skirts. So about a month and a half ago I went to Jo-Ann's armed with coupons and wanting to round out my summer skirt wardrobe. I've already posted about my maxi skirt and the knee length square skirt, the last skirt I made that weekend was McCall's 6654 view F. 

The skirt itself if a very simple A-line ending just a bit above my knee. 

It's comfy, looks good with a t-shirt, and took only 1 yrd of fabric. It was quick and easy to sew and I didn't have to make any modifications for fit. I do have to wear a slip to keep the lace strips from being see-through, but Western Washington doesn't really get hot enough for layers to be a problem, even in the summer. This skirt is pretty much a winner in my book.

Quick and Cute Skirt

I have noticed while talking to other sewers that there seems to be a widespread fear of sewing with knits. This is not a fear I really understand. I love knits. I find them to be a bit more forgiving to work with this woven fabric because the fit doesn't have to be as perfect.

I also find knit projects tend to work up faster. Case and point this skirt (which is a McCall's pattern, but I can't find a link to it on their website):

This skirt literally took me less then 30 minutes to cut out and sew together. If I had felt like dragging out my serger it probably would have take about 15 minutes. And that includes the time it took for my to make sure that the strips would line up when I was cutting the fabric.

I'm actually pretty pleased that they lined up because I was still taking valium for my neck injury when I decided to make this skirt and I had actually meant for the strips to go the other way so clearly I wasn't actually thinking that clearly when I cut the fabric. 

I'll freely admit that part of why it was such a quick project was that I didn't bother to hem it. When I started I had intended to hem the fabric, but I decided that I liked the way it curled at the bottom, I think it adds to the fun, casual, flirty feeling on the skirt. And that is part of why I love working with knits. Don't want to hem it? No problem, it's not going to unravel, and you don't end up with awful dangling bits of thread. 

And speaking of not unraveling, that means I don't have to bother with any sort of clean finish for the seams. I just run two lines of zig-zag and call it good. 

Yep, knits are pretty much my favorite. I've got one more knit skirt that I made this same weekend, I'm going to write about it next.

Maxi Skirt

It seems like maxi skirts have been getting increasingly popular the last few years. I've been kind of late jumping on this bandwagon mostly because I am way super not coordinated - seriously, ask my mom, she will confirm - and I was pretty sure I couldn't walk in a long skirt without tripping and killing myself. Secondarily I like showing off my tattoos when I am not at work and nobody could see my way awesome leg tattoos in a long skirt.

I was at Jo-Ann's looking at patterns (I love for 5 for $5 sales) and I found McCall's 7130.

 

Picture of view c taken from McCall's website

I'd gone into the store thinking that some new knit skirts would be just the ticket for summer and this was the maxi pattern that finally lured me into long skirt territory. Note that it has a slit up one side, so my tattoos could still be displayed. 

See, nice slit up to the knee. Also, I should have ironed it before I took pictures, but oh well. 

And here it is in all it's long glory. It's sort of hard to tell in the picture but the skirt it made in panels. I wish I could have gotten a good picture of me actually wearing it because it's much cuter that way. 

I did have to make a few modifications to the pattern. I made a size 16 and while I think the fit through the hips was perfect - any tighter and I would have had serious VPL problems - the waist didn't fit at all. It was huge and because it was actually designed to fold over it ended up being really bulky looking under a t-shirt. It pretty much added about 15 pounds that I really don't need around my gut. I sort of wish I had taken pictures so I could illustrate my point about the bad fit, but mostly I'm glad I didn't because I really don't need those pictures floating around. 

To solve the waist problem I first cut the waistband in half so instead of folding over it just sits straight at my natural waist. That wouldn't have worked if I had ever intended to wear it as a sleeveless dress like I was supposed to be able to, but since I am not into the sleeveless look I didn't mind losing the "two in one" nature. 

It was still to big to actually hold itself up at that point though. I ended up also adding a piece of 1" elastic (because it's what I had laying around). I didn't sew a tight channel for the elastic, it's pretty much just floating in the nearly four inches of waistband. So far I haven't had any problems with the elastic twisting or sliding around, so I'm calling it good. 

As you can kind of see if my picture of the slit I ended up hemming it by nearly four inches too. If you are leggy and tall this pattern would totally still work for you. I am 5'7" so I'm not exactly short, but most of my height comes from my torso so I'm not too surprised that ended up with extra fabric in the hem. 

Bonus: I totally haven't tripped over the hem yet. although one of my nieces did point out that I lift the skirt when I am going up and down stairs/hills. She totally laughed at me when I told her it was to keep from tripping. 

Dirndl Skirt

I've been doing tons of sewing lately, but my blog updates have been haphazard at best because of my crazy work schedule. Not that it takes a long time to write these posts, but I need light for the pictures and I live in a basement apartment so I pretty much have to take my photos between two and three o'clock in the afternoon to get the best light. 

This skirt is one that I made a while ago, but I only recently got around to taking pictures and thus writing a post about it. If asked I would adamantly deny that I like the color pink. I would also claim that I don't like synthetic fabrics. And yet when I was in JoAnn's this hot pink, fake "linen" which is actually a poly/rayon blend was just screaming for me to take it home. Much to my own surprise, I got four yards and made a dirndl (gathered) style skirt. I really like this skirt. I think it's comfortable and flattering. It also has the advantage of not needing a pattern because it's just three rectangles.

I decided to jazz it up a bit by adding pockets with a fun teal printed fabric. I should have placed the pockets about an inch higher because I have to reach down just a bit to slip my hands in, but I still love having pockets on a skirt and they are big enough for my entire hand (because I basically just traced a mitten shape around my hand to get the size).

Becuase I try to learn something new with every project, and there was nothing else very challenging with this skirt I challenged myself to do an inset lapped zipper, rather than my usual center lapped zipper. I think it's an attractive zipper, although when I use it in the future I will make sure to 1) leave more than 5/8 seam allowance so I have plenty of fabric for the lap and 2) make sure that I leave a space free of gathers because they made a challenging amount of bulk to deal with and it doesn't look as good as it should have. 

All in all I love this skirt. It's fun, it makes me feel cute and flirty, and it's easy to dress up or down. I think I'm pretty much going to live in it this summer. 

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. 

Cutting Project Pieces

As I mentioned yesterday I've been sick. I'm finally starting to feel better, but now my boyfriend's got it. I've got a bunch of sewing projects that I've been meaning to get to, but he was trying to take a nap, so I didn't want to actually run the sewing machine. As a result, I've spent my afternoon cutting out projects, without actually doing any sewing.

Top left is a new cotton button-up, top right is a denim pencil skirt (view C if you zoom in on the picture) and the bottom pile of white fabric will be sewn into two pillowcases. I'll give more details on each project when I actually sew them up.

I've also got a knit that I'm planning on making into a skirt. It's got 3/4" white and 1/4" black stripes. I was originally planning on making it into an a-line, but I hadn't really handled the fabric. I inherited it when my grandmother passed last spring. I love the stripes, but I hadn't realized the fabric was a knit until I shook it out to cut it. Now that I know it's a knit I'm thinking about making a second of my favorite knit pencil skirt. BUT the directionality of the stretch is such that I would end up with horizontal stripes. Not sure I want that in a pencil skirt. Now I'm conflicted. Would you make a horizontally striped pencil skirt?

ArtChain Day One

I don't know if y'all have seen it, but there is a hashtag making the rounds called #artchain. I have never used a hashtag before today, but my friend Holly tagged me so I'm participating. Even though I made this blog with the intention to document current projects I thought I would go ahead and post my artchain projects here in addition to facebook. Today I posted the knitting project about which I am most proud.

I designed the skirt, socks, and gloves myself. The skirt won me a blue ribbon from the county fair last summer, and I got third place for the socks. 

All the yarn is a lace-weight recycled cashmere/silk blend from the Etsy shop Penelopes Fine Yarns (with which I am in no way affiliated). Check out the shop if you want luxury yarns for affordable prices. The owner is super nice and the yarn ships quickly.

Anyway, the socks were made on size 000 needles, the gloves were made one size 1 and the skirt and shawl were size 6. I used about 3000 yards of yarn and I have no idea how many hours it took me. I tried to keep track, but I lost the exact number. If I had to hazard a guess I would say I spent more than 200 hours, about 100 of which was just one the socks. 

The skirt comes just below my knees, the socks come a couple inches above them. The gloves around a couple inches above my elbow. 

I have a confession to make about these clothes. Other than trying them on to make sure they fit, I've never worn these items. They are my most time-consuming and labor intensive project of all time and I'm afraid of ruining them. I guess I just haven't had the right occasion. Even if I never do wear them, I think that might be okay. They were made for the art of it, and they make me happy just to look at.

So there you have it folks. ArtChain day 1.