Tartan A-line Skirt

So here's the deal. For many years I had worn jeans, jeans and nothing but jeans. They were comfy, they were safe, they went with all my tops and jumpers making wardrobe choices easy. Then last summer, feeling a little guilty for the small collection of skirts gathering dust in my wardrobe I decided to give them an airing. To my greatest surprise I discovered I now love wearing skirts (quite a change from last time I'd worn them). To top up my collection I had a go at making one - and it went well, then I made a second - even better.

By the end of the summer I didn't want to go back exclusively to trousers for the winter months so I stocked up on tights, packed away my brightest summery skirts and bought some material to make another skirt that would be suitable all year round.

Have you guessed it yet? Yes, it's March and I still have the material and no skirt.

Until now...

I had two main dilemma's that had stopped me progressing with this project. Firstly, that I wanted the tartan on the diagonal, which meant dealing with the material on the bias - something that sounded very scary. The other problem, was when I got it out and looked at it closer (about November time) I realised that the squares on the tartan weren't, well, square. This meant that I couldn't get my head around how the pattern was going to meet at the side seams and I packed it all away for another day.

After watching the Great British Sewing Bee episode on patterned fabrics a couple of weeks ago I felt it was time to go for it. No more faffing, or dilly dallying. The material was £5/mtr so if it all went horribly wrong it wasn't going to break the bank (I was still going to try my darned hardest to make sure it didn't of course).

The grain runs top to bottom (ish)

I took the pattern I'd started from when making my previous a-line and used my quilting ruler to mark on the 45 degree line. Then lined this up with the grain on the material, made sure that the pattern was fairly central, took a deep breath and cut out the first piece. Phew. Then matched this piece up exactly on the fabric pattern and cut a second one. I realised my saving grace was that this material looked identical (to my eyes at least) on the back and the front, so I didn't need to flip one of the two pieces in order to have "right sides together". I could use them both as I'd cut them which meant everything would meet at the sides after all. Hooray!

Knowing that no matter how well I pin things they have a tendency to shift a little as they go through the sewing machine I decided to take my time with this one (very unusual) and tack it all together before I sewed it properly. It would only take the pattern to be a little bit off and it was going to show - not a very forgiving project, and I wanted it to stand up the scrutiny of the more experienced dressmakers around me.

Side seams tacked, zip tacked, darts tacked. Time for the machine. A few minutes later and the main body of the skirt was done and pressed. The zip took a couple of attempts to get close enough, but generally time spent tacking really paid off. It's not 100% perfect, but I'm pretty pleased with it.

Then I spent a while trying to decide whether to line it or not (you'd think I'd make these decisions sooner in the process wouldn't you? Maybe next time...). I tried it on as it was and came to the conclusion that it was clinging to my tights rather a lot so lining was the way forward. I ordered some online and then progressed as far as I could with the waistband while I waited for it to be delivered.

I used the same technique here as my first skirt attempt; making the waistband into a tube for the first couple of inches, complete with button hole; sewing the length of it to the top of the skirt; pressing it in half; pressing a seam allowance under at the bottom and (later) stitching "in the ditch" all the way round to finish.

When the lining arrived I made a second copy of my skirt - this was nice and quick, no pattern matching to do here! I then popped this into the waistband before doing the final "stitch in the ditch" to secure the two parts together. I decided to leave it loose at the bottom.

Finally there was just the hemming to do. (Ha ha. Just the hemming - what a laugh. Must have got close to spending more time getting the hems right than the rest of the skirt put together. Remind me of this next time I get that "it's almost finished" feeling and I still have hems to do). I went for a blind hem on the outer skirt in the end and Joe kindly made me a rolled hem on the lining. Joe also did the buttonhole, it's his machine and apparently it makes buttonholes only for him. When I try it just ties me a beautifully huge knot!

I'm so proud of myself for actually tackling this project. I'd bought the material in a fit of skirt making enthusiasm but bottled out of making it on several occasions. When it came to it my original mental picture of how it would come together worked out perfectly - I should have had more faith!

Sneaky photo of Pepper...

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Denim Skirt

I wear jeans a lot. When I say a lot, I mean almost every day. The trouble with this is I tend to wear through a pair in just a few months, and most of my pairs go the same way. A hole will appear, normally on a seam somewhere. I'll think about mending them and then notice that there are two or three more baby holes just ready to spring into life, so I just pop them to the back of the wardrobe and buy a new pair. As the holes are all fairly localised to one area and most of the material is fine, I feel bad throwing all the old jeans away and so I hoard them. Then I feel guilty for taking up so much space with useless clothes. What to do?!

Then I found this:

Skirt made by Christephi at 'Christephis Sprouting Flowers'

I got quite excited. A whole new skirt make from all those jeans at the back of my cupboard. I dug them all out and totted up - five pairs of jeans all with plenty of usable material. So, last month, I thought I'd give it a go.

I drew out a pattern according to the instructions and based on a 72" hem line (maybe I should have gone bigger with this?), and cut out material from four different pairs of jeans. I decided to try and utilise the existing hems as this would save me time later - though this did mean I had to reject some of the material being rather worn out!

Next I had to decide how to arrange my strips. I had eight pieces that were all a fairly similar dark blue, and four paler, striped bits. I laid them out in a regular pattern and then rearranged them using a random number generator, and decided that I preferred the regular arrangement (no surprises there).

The next stage was to think about waistbands and pockets. I wanted to make these from a contrasting material rather than more denim and so delved deep into our material box and found some bits left over from making my handbag last year.

Everything now assembled I started sewing together the strips, starting at the hem end of each to try and get as even a hem as possible.

Once I'd sewn together six of the strips (half way there!) I considered the pocket. You've guessed it - I found an online tutorial and whizzed up a pocket set between two of the navy strips. Then I continued to sew the pieces together until I had eleven pieces attached.

Then the zip. I was so pleased with my a-line skirt that I copied this technique, and then finished off the side seam. Finally I made it into the round by sewing along the last of the long seams.

Having then tried it on I decided that the fit wasn't quite right and decided to tighten the seams between each of the panels across the back of the skirt - the equivalent of putting in a couple of darts - so that it fitted snuggly around my waist.

All that then remained was to tidy up the waist. This proved trickier than I had originally thought, mostly due to my stupidity. When I had cut out the waistband I had made it rectangular based on the measurement at the top of the skirt. I think this would have been fine before I tightened the seams, but in doing so I added quite a bit of tapering between the measurement at the top of the skirt and one inch further down. I attached the waist band either side of the zip, then sewed along the top with no problems as this was the length that had been measured. It was only then that I discovered that there just wasn't enough fabric to stretch zip to zip at the bottom of the waistband as it was that bit further down the skirt. Make sense? Probably not - I'm rambling!

After a lot of easing the material into position and careful pining I added a couple of snips to the waistband and hand sewed it to hold it in position on each of the seams so to hide the stitches.

So what should have been a quick finish turned into a bit of a faff. But its all learning - I certainly won't make that mistake again!

Casual skirt made out of old jeans. I've been wearing this one a lot since I finished it, denim wearing habits don't die so easily! What do you think?

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A-line Skirt

Following on from last weeks jumper post I thought I'd tell you about another foray I've had recently into the world of making my own clothes. On a few occasions Joe has made things for me to wear, including a couple of very pretty dresses. We often keep an eye out for fabric bargains to make use of, and earlier this year we came across this purple velvet at £2.50 a metre and for a bargain like that decided to get a couple of metres for skirt making. It got shelved for a rainy weekend.

The twist in this tale is that I've decided that maybe it's time I made my own skirt, rather than waiting for Joe to do it for me (he's building a table after all). I've used sewing machines before - mostly for patchwork quilting - so making a skirt should be a simple enough process, surely?

To Google! I went hunting for patterns and instead found lots of blogs detailing how to make your own. For an a-line skirt all you need is your waist measurement, your hip measurement, the distance between the two and the length of your skirt. There are plenty of these out there, but I ended up following this one.

Once I'd sorted out the basic pattern I cut out two pieces - front and back - and then also cut out a waistband. For this I used the length of top of the pattern piece, plus 5cm to create overlap for a button as per this design.

After this it was just a case of assembly.

First I sewed the right hand side seam together - simple running stitch and then overlock the edges.

Then I added a couple of darts to the back piece. This was to help the side seams run straight up and down - basically taking into account that my waist measurement from hip to hip is larger across my tummy than it is across my back!

Next I sewed in the invisible zip using this very handy tutorial. I'm really pleased with how well this turned out.

And then finished off the left hand seam. It was suddenly starting to look like a skirt!

 Next I had to attach the waistband. First I folded it in half - wrong sides together, ironed it flat, and then sewed up the ends that weren't going to be attached to the body of the skirt. Then I turned it the right way round and ironed it again.

Then I sewed it to the top of the skirt, wrong sides together.

After ironing this seam so that from the outside the skirt looked finished I tucked in the raw edge along the back of the skirt and sewed along it through all the layers of fabric.

Next I made a button hole and attached a button.

Finally I finished off the hem.

Ta da - one finished skirt. I'm quite chuffed with this as a first attempt. What do you think?

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