But anyway on Friday September 1st Pattern Review finally announced the challenge for round 1 of the sewing bee. It was to make a pencil skirt inspired by a piece of music or a musician.
Of course my first thoughts were of the metal/grunge music that I got into as a teenager. And with that thought came the memory of the flanno shirt tied around the waist - it was pretty much my uniform for a number of years inspired by many of my favourite band members. In order to narrow down my inspiration I went looking through photos on the internet - strangely enough the only photos that I could find of my favourite band members wearing this style was Axl Rose. Well considering that Gun 'N Roses were probably the first band that I really fell in love with I figured that the following photos was going to be my inspiration for this competition.
I did have a second thought and contemplated creating a brown corduroy skirt based on Eddie Vedder's brown corduroy jacket, but decided when I was looking at the brown corduroy that I was less likely to wear that skirt so went back to my original idea.
Once I had my idea down I headed for the fabric store, thankfully my husband had taken the day off work so he stayed home with the kids so I was able to browse for as long as I wanted. I stopped first at my favourite discount fabric store Sewfisticated, but they didn't have anything close to what I was looking for so I headed down to Fabric Place Basement instead.
I had a piece of red flannel in mind that I was looking for, but unfortunately I couldn't find it - well not in flannel anyway. I did find something that I really liked in a chiffon type fabric, but the right plaid flannel eluded me. I found another red plaid flannel that wasn't the perfect colour scheme, but was close enough to my vision and bought both that and the plaid chiffon. I also found some really nice looking and feeling black faux leather and since I knew I wanted some contrast on my skirt I bought that as well.
I spent the entire trip home trying to decide which piece of fabric to use and finally decided that I wanted to go with the flannel - that was the inspiration after all - and I'm really glad I did because I love the way it turned out.
Whilst I put my fabric through the washer and dryer I grabbed the computer and started searching for patterns. I found a number of patterns that were ok, especially on the Lekala website, but there was nothing that was perfect, so in the end I decided I would make the pattern from scratch and that way I could get all the details in that I wanted.
Specifically I wanted a V shaped waistband. I like this style on me because it can make me look a little less short waisted, but also I wanted the V shape to copy the shape of the shirt tied around the waist look.
For anyone not interested in all the nitty gritty details skip to the photos at the end of the post now - I wanted to document this in case I want to try it again another day!
In order to create the pattern I grabbed some old bottom weight cotton that I bought cheaply to use as muslin material and set to work with my dress form. I cut a strip the width that I wanted the waistband and then draped it on the dress form, sewed a seam up the front to create the V and seams down the sides contouring around my waist. I then cut 4 panels a bit bigger than each section of the waist band and sewed them to the bottom edges of the waistband allowing for plenty of overlap at each join. Because of the angle of the waistband in the front this left a large gap in the center of the skirt so I cut another triangular piece of fabric that I sewed between the two front pieces to fill in the gap. When I saw the way that looked I knew I had to keep that feature. I was like that's the gap between the edge of the flanno shirt.
So then I started sewing up all the vertical seams. This took a few tries to get the balance right taking some width out at the side seams, some out at the triangle at the front and some out along the back seam. till I finally got it to a place that I was happy with.
I then trimmed all the seams to 1/2" wide and took the whole thing apart and traced around them to create an actual pattern, this allowed me to account for any slight differences between the two sides to make it symmetrical etc - especially on that front triangle.
I could then start cutting out my actual fabric. I aligned the stripe in the fabric with the angle of the waistband so that plaid was on an angle rather than straight up and down.
Not bad work for one day.
Day 2 I started putting the final skirt together. First I took each piece of the plaid flannel material and serged around all the edges to stop any fraying.
I started with the back pieces first sewing the lower flannel pieces to the leather waistband.
Each seam was pressed and then top stitched at both 1/8" and 1/4" to strengthen the seam.
Next step was to put the front section together, the two side front pieces were sewed onto the faux leather center triangle, and finally the two side seams were sewn up.
To allow me to get the skirt on and off I went with an exposed metal teeth zipper right down the back. I originally planned to just put in a 9" long zipper, but I really struggled to get the seam below the zipper to sit nicely so in the end I changed to a full length separating zipper.
I used an iron on interfacing along the length of the back seam before sewing on the zipper.
I taped all my pattern pieces together so I just had a front and back and cut those pieces out of the poly material. I sewed the pieces together at the side seam and then serged all free edges.
I then sewed it to the main skirt along the top edge and the down the back seams encasing the zipper.
To finish the lining I turned the bottom up twice and hand stitched the hem. The main fabric I sewed some black 2" bias hem binding to the bottom, turned it up and again hand stitched it.
I hand stitched the hem and lining down the back seam below the zipper to neatly finish all edges.
Once the skirt was finished I decided that it might be a bit too plain for a contest, it didn't really show too many sewing techniques so I decided to go back and add some pockets. I found a scrap of leather on the floor cut at an angle and decided that it actually looked pretty good so that gave me the idea of making flap pockets.
I did a some research on how to make flap pockets, having never done one before and made a few practice pockets on scrap fabric.
Then I had to figure out where I wanted them front or back.
It wasn't easy trying to install the pockets when I already had the lining in place, and actually managed to make a tiny cut in the lining at one point, but I got them done.
I left off the welt under the flap just because I wanted to keep the pockets as minimal as possible as I didn't want an lot of extra bulk on my bum.
I took myself to the local Michaels craft store and found some charms with musical notes on them which I thought would fit the theme nicely.
They were a silver colour however and I thought that might look a bit weird with the gold zipper so I bought some gold metallic paint and gave them a thin coat. They were then hand stitched on above the sewn on snaps that I used to hold the flap closed.
When I was at the craft store I also found some stickers that look like gold studs. I stuck a few along the bottom edge of the leather waistband to make a real "Metal" statement.
I love the skirt and will probably wear it with a black t shirt if I ever wear it, but I wanted to really make it pop for the contest, so I decided to make a shirt to go with it.
After sketching out a few ideas one kept popping up that looked best. I used the leather again to make another angled band around the bottom, then draped the plaid fabric around, added a few bust darts and a couple of leather straps and it was done well enough for what I needed. I used my other gold zipper to do up the top, but didn't bother with any real finishing techniques. I doubt I'll ever wear the top outside of these photos as it requires a strapless bra and they are so uncomfortable!
Final verdict - I love my new skirt, but I don't know how much I'll wear it. Whilst it's comfortable to wear, its not exactly practical - even getting up and down stairs is hard work in a pencil skirt, getting into the car even harder. And it's really not good for lounging around in. That said I do think I'll actually wear the skirt on occasion, just cause it's so cool.
