Sunday, April 22, 2012

Journey to a Skirt

A while back I had an idea for a skirt.  I'm not quite sure where it came from, but it was a gray skirt, and the bottom of the skirt was pieced fabrics in grays, silver and black, possibly lightly quilted.  The piecing was random, square, rectangular, wide, tall.  I had a vague idea that it might look like a skyline, so in my head I was calling it the Cityscape Skirt.


Fast forward to Tuesday night.  Mario has a class that night and I spend the 3 hours of his absence sewing like a demon.  I made a pair of my favorite TNT pants on Tuesday from some lovely charcoal gray RPL that I got from Gorgeous Fabrics a while back.  Before I started cutting, I realized that if I played my cards right and cut very, very carefully, I would have enough left over to make a pencil skirt.  I already knew I had the other fabrics in either stash or remnants. 


The pants were finished and I was hemming them by the time he got home.  I'd also cut out the pencil skirt and had a small chunk of fabric left over besides.  Amazing what careful cutting can do.


The next night, I cut out a bunch of pieces of black, light gray, silver (a metallic coated cotton) and self fabric and played with layout.  I could see my original idea in my head, but I couldn't make it come together on the table.  Everything looked forced and weird.  Eventually I cut a long strip of the silver coated cotton and the self fabric, sewed them together and cut them in 2" sections.  Those were sewn together in an alternating checkerboard, and I laid it across the bottom of the skirt to see how it looked. 


Hmm.  I couldn't quite tell from there, so I decided just to go with it.  I sewed the patchwork band on the skirt from the underside at the top, then folded and pressed the hem of the skirt and the band.  I had some quilt batting on hand that I didn't use for the 1912 jacket, so I cut a strip of that and put under the band.  I hand-sewed the hem, then topstitched the top of the band.  It looked raised, but not puffy. I was encouraged.  I did a line of stitching down the center of the strip, then started playing around with it.  I sewed X's through each of the gray squares, and then did spirals in the silver squares, pulling the thread tightly to add texture to the silver.  From a distance it looks somewhat like leather.


I'm still not sure where I'm going here, but it's an interesting journey all the same. 

3 comments:

gMarie said...

Very interesting. Can't wait to see the final garment. What will you pair it with? g

Sewingelle said...

What a tease! where is the finished photo!!
Looks like it will be fabulous. I love organic sewing like this. I find it so theraopeatic and so different from my day job.

gwensews said...

Your poppy dress is beautiful. Loved the story about the giving of daughters in lieu of drugs! Shees!k