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Although the true goal of this week is to finish any works in progress, i.e. ones that have been started already, this skirt has been started in my head since January.  I bought the fabrics in New York City; it was $1/yard for the solid orange I used as the lining and $2/yard for the print.  And regardless of the price, this is one of my all-time most favorite prints.  I’ve had dreams around this print in which my whole house is wallpapered in it.

I did not use a pattern, which is more and more my style these days.  So often with patterns, I have to make adjustments for size anyway, or I have want to make something slightly different than the pattern’s finished product, so I end up doing my own thing anyway, as well as wasting a lot of time and effort meticulously cutting out and ironing the tissue paper pattern pieces, pinning, etc.

After you’ve made just a few completed sewing projects, I encourage anyone to try to make their own things without a pattern.  It’s so liberating and it’s not so difficult once you get over the mental hurdle of intimidation.  Also, I have found that it’s pretty much the same success rate, so if something doesn’t work out without a pattern, chances are it wouldn’t have worked out with a pattern either, because perhaps my skills aren’t honed enough, my workmanship was sloppy, because I cut corners (which I would have done with a pattern anyway) and so forth.

There are countless lessons online, books on the subject, and yes, patterns to follow, so I will not bother with a full tutorial.  Honestly, I have too many projects to finish!  But without further ado, after the jump, I will present some tips and tricks to make this skirt.

Just because I wasn’t into measuring myself last night (it’s too depressing seeing what my waistline’s circumference is) I used an old store bought skirt as a guide to the waist and shape of the lining.  I committed the deadly sewing sin of Sloth when I did not try on the skirt before cutting.  And since it was quite old, it barely fit me unless I wore it at the highest possible part of my waist.  So I had to make the backside of the skirt much wider than the front to make up for the narrowness.  Before cutting, I added a generous inch to the front and back pieces of the skirt for seam allowance, which also made the skirt a little roomier.

Above are the front and back of the skirt’s lining, just two simple A-lines without any darts, gathering, etc.  All the pieces of the skirt were cut along the selvage, NOT cut along the bias.  I didn’t want my skirt to be too stretchy.  But I did make the waist curve downward.  Originally, I also cut extra pieces of interfacing from the orange cloth for the waistline, just out of habit.  Every skirt I’ve ever made from a pattern has required interfacing.  But then I realized that the lining will act as an interfacing, so I scrapped them.

Then the fun really began.  I cut the outer layer of the waist from the print, matching the lining exactly and making both pieces (front and back) the same height, approximately 8 inches, again with generous seam allowance.

The two tiers below it were not curved, just regular rectangles.  Here again, Sloth and the venial sewing sin of Impatience reared their ugly heads and so I did not iron ANYTHING!  Thank goodness it didn’t make much difference.  Sometimes, it can really be the death of a project, especially in patchwork.

The top of each tier was basted with long machine stitches, then gathered, pinned to the tier above it, and sewn with short stitches.  Then when I could, I removed the basting stitches.  Here is the wrong side of the outer layer:

And here is the right side:

The two layers, lining and tiered outer shell, were sewn at the waist wrong sides together and then topstitched when the fabrics were turned right sides out.

I wanted to keep the lining and the outer layer separate except at the waistline.  Therefore, I could not sew the zipper to both, only the outer layer.  But the lining was kept open and hemmed around the zipper area so that it would move during dressing and undressing.

Then I hemmed both layers, keeping the lining shorter than the outer shell and finally ironed it, kind of a penance for my previous sewing sins.

Tags: apparel, clothing, Fabric, Finished Projects, Lining, Sewing, skirts, summer, WIPs, Zippers . This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 30th, 2010 at 12:54 pm and is filed under Fabric Crafts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.