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Monday, August 18, 2008

My first skirt

In order to avoid becoming too intimidated by my fancy skirt pattern and lovely fabric and letting it gather dust due to cold feet I decided to follow an ancient Greek philosophy (much beloved of the goddess Nike) and "just do it".

Of course I'm not actually an idiot so by "just do it" I mean that I popped into King's after work, bought some £1.50 per metre polycotton and made up what in the UK is known as a toile and in the US as a muslin. Although I'm a Brit I'm going to be calling it a muslin, not least because I have great difficulties pronouncing the work "toile" (it usually comes out somewhere between toil and twirl). I have no such issues with the word "muslin".

Given how inexpensive the fabric was I had more qualms about cutting into my pattern pieces than into the cloth but I managed to get them all pinned on and cut out correctly with no mess ups. It is really a very straightforward pattern in the main (although the bit about the zip looks rather scary) but it's my first attempt at sewing from a pattern so I'm a bit scissor shy.

pattern pieces

Because it's a layered skirt there are an awful lot of pattern pieces to cut out, but because the layers end in raw edges there isn't a commensurate amount of hemming so I was able to sew up the muslin pretty quickly.

Barcelona layered skirt muslin

It fits extremely well, in fact almost a little too well, given that the real skirt is going to have a lining. I'll make a decision tomorrow, at an hour more conducive to rational thought, about whether my pieces should be cut a little larger or whether it just means that the skirt will sit a little higher.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yay! :D

I can't wait to see the finished skirt.

Kim said...

Yay! Well done with the toile. I'm sure making the finished skirt will go smoothly and I'm looking forward to seeing it. If the zip is a bit scary then my tip is to baste it in by hand first, it's a bit of a faff but I've found it makes it easier in the long run.

Anonymous said...

It looks great! it'll be fun to see how the unhemmed edges work in the cotton too :)