Monday, June 28, 2010

skirts

This is the first skirt I ever made. It is an airline blanket that I took with me to the Cornerstone Music Festival, back in the summer of 2001. It was extremely hot and, out of desperation and a newfound hatred of shorts, I sewed this skirt with a sewing kit someone from the next campsite had. It is probably still my favorite skirt even though it looks pretty junky. It's certainly gotten enough wear these past nine years! (wow, I'm old.)

If the airline blanket skirt is my favorite, my brown circle skirt is definitely second favorite. I found this vintage brown linen at a garage sale about four years ago and made my first circle skirt. As you can see, the hemline is very uneven, in fact it's not really a line at all! I did not really know what I was doing and so the sides are shorter than the front and back. But, if you know me, you know that doesn't bother me one bit. I think this is the main reason I've stuck with sewing for so long. When most people would get frustrated and rip something out, I would just say, "eh, it looks fine" and wear it. I have definitely come a long way though...



Here's a close-up of the tie and button to keep the opening closed. (notice the sloppy stitching)



And here is my next attempt at a circle skirt, which as you can see has an even hemline--hooray! I think this one is only two years old. But it doesn't get worn as often because everything goes with brown, and not everything goes with this blue.
So, the point of this post is two-fold:
1) Don't let yourself get overly frustrated if you're learning to sew. If you are, do one of two things, either stop sewing and come back to the project some other day (I do this a lot!) or just say to yourself, "no one else will notice this mistake, so I'm not going to care." and just leave it. (I know I'm making some of you cringe.)
2)I absolutely love and adore circle skirts because they are extremely easy to make and they're very full without having gathers. So I thought I would post a simple tutorial here sometime before the end of summer. Believe me, if you make a circle skirt, you'll fall in love too!

Do you have a favorite skirt? What style is it? What makes you love it?

5 comments:

Commander Kip said...

Hmm, favorite kind of skirt? Anything super long and full enough to twirl in. XD

Anonymous said...

wow, i never knew the story behind the blue skirt! thats fun.

Anonymous said...

right now i have a plaid kilt i haven't worn yet, actually looking forward to fall so i can try it out. and that is saying something in wisconsin, yikes. i absolutely love skirts. i just got a knife-pleat navy skirt, quite long. i have passed over many knife-pleat skirts until i saw a girl wearing a grey one on the paris metro. i'm craving some kind of poufy skirt, maybe i should try a circle skirt! don't get me started on skirts, i think i love them all, and sweaters to go with...

Christy said...

Wow, where did you get the kilt? I've been wanting one for years!

Anonymous said...

I'm a thrift shop addict, and I think I got it at Goodwill. I have seen quite a few there over the years. This one fits great and doesn't look too costumey, although I don't mind that, but my husband kind of does.. haha. I think it's from Eddie Bauer, has leather buckles, a fresh blue and white plaid wool, nice length, not too short or long. Here in northeastern Wisconsin the Goodwills put stuff like kilts out around "Halloween" which I don't observe, but I can't wait until that time of year to paw through all the vintage stuff! With ebay and so forth though, I think a lot of really neat stuff never makes it to the sales floor!