New skirts with vintage flair!

 

So here are my new skirts that took up much of my weekend.  The first one (shiny one to the left) was made from this fabulous vintage fabric found at a rummage sale at the Silver Spring Stage, where is also the same event where I found the couch that the skirt is laying on.  It's hard to capture by photo, it's a gorgeously shiny deep grayish-teal.  The second one I found at the fabric shop of Bits of Thread a few days ago.  it's a buttery smooth wool with royal blue/indigo and black houndstooth that's just fantastic.  It's real houndstooth, not any wimpy print.  (For those in the know, houndstooth is a big deal for Alabama football fans, so this is just a little extra fun.)

I've found that with my ... ahem... ample figure (honestly, from the waist down, it's mostly solid muscle from a childhood spent playing sports and dancing), a pencil skirt is generally the way to go.  And luckily, it works out that the way my proportions are, I can simply create a tube, and add in 2 darts in the front, 2 darts in the back, and then manage the waist and the hem.  For the first skirt, I just used one big rectangle, and in the back long seam used the top to add in the zipper, and opened the bottom to create a slit so that it's not a hobble skirt.  My trusty Huskystar does a good job of the hidden hem (or at least mostly hidden hem), so it's a pretty simple process to go from flat rectangle to shaped, finished skirt.

The second skirt was a lot more effort! First, I added in pockets, which are always a bit of a mind-bender, with or without a pattern.  I made the overall skirt pattern the same way as the first one, though broke up the rectangle.  I made the front panel slightly less than enough for half-way around my hips, and then 2 half-back panels that join in the middle to allow for the zipper and the slit.  I haven't done pockets in ages, so I did it simply at the side seam with square pockets.  The most annoying thing in the entire process was that the fabric unravels very, very easily.  So that means, that unlike most of my skirts that I make, I had to entirely seal up all the seams, nothing raw could be exposed, or it would all unravel and be destroyed.  Hadn't realized that back at the fabric shop, or I would have grabbed some seam tape.  Luckily at some big box craft/fabric store, I had bought ages ago a big grab bag full of random ribbon lengths, and still had some in the old craft closet.  So I sealed up all the seams with folded over ribbon (some of it nice and smooth!), and used up some more of the random junk I have.  That added so much time, that I really couldn't get to make a third skirt for the weekend, but I'm so proud of it.  I also added some sparkly little decorative buttons above the pockets for fun (zoom in to see the sparklies).

I'm planning to wear skirt #2 to work tomorrow, so hopefully everything works.  It's pretty snug at the waist, but otherwise pretty roomy and I've got a lot of hope for it.