Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Catching Up




It's been too long since I updated, I apologize for that. I lost my digital camera at Christmastime and that stopped me from blogging--but not from crafting! So I have a lot of catching up to do. (I just got a new camera.)

The most exciting thing I've been working on is this skirt. Unfortunately I only have pictures of the final product, but I started working on this in January. First, I wove the fabric out of birch gray and golden yellow cotton--the gray is in the warp and the yellow is in the weft. The color combination created an iridescent fabric (what I was going for), but the color mixing didn't come out as well as I'd hoped. It's kind of a tan/bronze/green/what-is-that-color-gross!!

Since I wove 8 yards of it (what was I thinking?!), I had to use it for something. I dug out an old skirt pattern I'd made years ago that has 15 gores and is very flared at the bottom. (Fun to spin around in.) I just happened to have exactly enough fabric to make it. I cut each piece out carefully and immediately surged it to the lining, a gray wool suiting fabric. Then I sewed all the gores together, hemmed it, made a waistband, and added a side zipper.

Well, it was boring. I spent at least a month trying to decide on how to decorate the hem. I really thought I would put some fancy golden yellow lace on it. Of course where do you find yellow lace? Nowhere. Then, I randomly found the exact color of lace I needed and... I didn't like it.
In the end I decided to make ruffles with the scrap pieces leftover from cutting. The pieces were shaped perfectly for irregular ruffles. Then I edged the ruffles with some yellow linen to make them stand out more.

The end result reminds me a lot of a Victorian walking skirt.
I hope you can see the iridescence in the pictures.

2 comments:

Gracie G. said...

I just happened to see that you had updated and I was so happy! That skirt is beautiful! And you weaved it? Very cool!

Anonymous said...

Wow,that is really unique and beautiful!