31 Days Series: Skirt

Ok. Today I made a skirt. This is not a tutorial, by any means, just a quick explanation of what I wanted to do, what I actually did, and the end result. (Which, amazingly, came out better than expected.)

I started with this little inspiration picture and these two fabrics:

Remember the other day, when I was cutting things out of Lucky? Well that's where I saw that skirt. And when I picked up that crazy velvety, 70s-esque fabric, I knew that's what I had to make with it! (And just for the record, this was also made with fabrics I already had on hand. I need to get through them before I can start buying any new stuff...and I have a lot to get through.)

I cut 5 pieces of fabric: the front piece out of the gray-green soft stuff, two back pieces, and then two more back pieces out of the paisley for the inside. I just kind of eye-balled the front, and then made one back piece and used it to trace the other. I can't sew with patterns, never learned how, but I managed to inherit a real knack for making things up as I go along and it working out in my favor. (Apparently I'm taking back what I said about paisley.) Actually it just happened to match perfectly, and besides you don't really see much of it.

I used my trusty heat-bond to attach the paisley to the inside of the back pieces of the skirt

and then put it all together. It was harder than I thought it would be working with the larger pieces after they had been heat-bonded together. They were kind of stiff, but not too bad. I still sewed them altogether and then hemmed it up just fine, but I do kind of hope that it softens up a little after a couple of washes. If not, no big deal, you can't really tell when I'm wearing it or anything. :)

(Apologies for the lighting in the 'final' pictures, the sun had already gone down by the time I finished this.)

I ended up going with a rounded edge on the front piece rather than straight across. I think it adds a bit more 'today' feel, rather than something straight out of 1976. Finished product:

I'm pretty proud of this too, it's the first skirt I've ever put together that was more than just two pieces or an alteration of something else. Hooray for progress!

(See a list of the other 30 days in this series here.)