BWOF #133, 9/07

The Skirt(s)

Before I get into the skirts, here are the pictures of my daughter wearing her new dress, the pink skirt, a pink turtleneck she already had and a pair of the new tights:

You can just see the skirt/petticoat hanging below the dress in the picture above. Below is a better picture of the skirt. My daughter really likes the skirt because it is very full (240" or so in that bottom tier) and because it is taffeta and stands out a bit like a net petticoat would.

These skirts are very easy to make! For this skirt, Burda did not publish pattern pieces but instead published the measurements for the rectangles that make up each tier of the skirt. There are several lengths of skirts so that they can be worn individually or layered for different looks. I made the pink skirt the longest, with the brown dress and skirt will shorter.

Once I figured out the proper size (after adding in seam allowances), I cut the tiers across the width of the fabric, using a rotary cutter, ruler and mat. Below you can see the brown sequined skirt in the process of being cut out.

The skirt pieces sew together easily - once the edges were finished with the serger and the rolled hem done, all I had to do was gather each tier and stitch it to the previous one. The serger was perfect for the fray prone taffeta! After the tiers are sewn together, the casing and elastic were put in and the skirt was done. Burda includes instructions for using foldover elastic, but since I didn't have any in the appropriate color (and I'd have to order it!), I chose to put in a casing and separate elastic instead.

The brown skirt and the pink turtleneck are cut out, so I should be able to finish those this week and then make up the jacket next week!

Q/A: Pirate asked: "My question is do you have a special technique to disguise the old hemline? Whenever I made pants for my girls I would either make a deep hem (as you did) or sew on a false cuff (another technique for lengthening). In former case, the fold from the old hemline would be very evident. Putting trim along that line fairly screams "I let the hem out!". In the latter case, the stitching line that held the false cuff to the garment could also been seen.
So .... what do you do to disguise an old hemline?"

Yikes! This brings back memories of my mother putting rick-rack on let down hemlines of my clothes! Well, most of the clothes I make for my daughter start out a tad too long, and by the time they get too short, she ends up not being able to wear them because they're too tight. In the case that I do have to let out a hem, I usually cut it off and replace it with a contrasting ruffle, flounce or band of some sort and then make matching cuffs or other embellishments so that the hem area isn't the only place with the replacement fabric. I actually did that for my daughter's school clothes one year. She was very young and my son was a toddler so I didn't have time to make a whole wardrobe from scratch. I bought a variety of second hand dresses and jumpers and then bought contrast fabrics to make ruffles, bands, etc. for the bottom to length them. RTW is always too short for her as she's tall and thin for her age. There was one pink corduroy dress that I put a bright printed cuffs on that was her favorite and worn it until is was past being too small.

Parting Shot: Guess what I bought from MOMPattern's? Does it look familiar? It might, it's the original (or pretty close to) of Simplicity's re-release, #3673.