I Feel Like Dancing

This was meant to be the corduroy-accented wrap skirt from the Batshit Wishlist, but it turned into enough of an engineering challenge without the wrap belt that I made an executive decision to skip that detail. Instead it's a lovely, extremely full linen skirt that I've been informed looks perfect for contra dancing.

I will admit, now that I've watched a few videos, contra dancing looks fun. Terrifying (as is true of all dancing, for me). But fun.

I cropped it out, but this started as a continuation of the informal series: Photos With Ceiling Fans Haloing Sabine's Head.

However, first I had to make the skirt, which was (not to mince words) a dangling-participled, slack-jawed, pustulated ratbag. I know I look smug up there. I am. Because at several stages I was tempted to light this skirt on fire rather than have it in my presence any longer. (Lighting myself on fire was also briefly considered, but discarded as surplus to requirements.)

This might be the least stylish photo of myself I've ever posted to the interwebs.

The skirt started with the world's laziest mockup—I nabbed the upper curve of the waistband from an older pattern I'd used for a calaveras skirt, and extended the pattern lines to make an eight-inch-deep yoke. Risky business, perhaps, but as I have no hips to speak of, just extending the existing lines gave plenty of room. I pinned in a scrap serving as the pocket proxy, to check placement and depth (note that the tips of my fingers just reach the bottom of the pocket; none of these "can't quite fit a phone or keys" pockets, thanks). And then pinned just the center section of one of the half-circle panels I'd cut for the body of the skirt, just to get a sense of the length I was likely end up with.

I pinned the whole mess to myself, roughly where I wanted the waist to land, and called it good.

Pockets the size of FRANCE!

Luckily I am a compulsive scrap saver, and, more luckily still, my massive pockets just fit on the leftover bits from cutting four half-circles from my (overdyed and nonrepeatable) linen. This was meant to be a 1.5-circle skirt, but I realized I wouldn't have enough fabric left for anything else of substance after that. I did have enough for one more half-circle, so a tremendously full skirt was born.

If I'd left it this way, it would've been a killer can-can skirt.

I didn't take many photos of constructing the yoke/pockets/skirt, mainly because I had no idea what I was doing and I very much do not recommend constructing a skirt this way.

I wanted a full yoke lining, but my pockets needed to open starting in the yoke, and they were meant to continue into the skirt. This led to all manner of finagling to get the front lining tacked to one surface of the pockets, the other surface of which was tacked to the outer layer of the yoke, without accidentally closing the pocket opening. I also had meant to use the yoke lining to finish the upper edge of the skirt by enclosing it between the lining and outer layers of the yoke, but with pockets in the way, that didn't quite work. (Entailing more pocket-tacking to seal off the raw upper edges of the skirt panels.)

In a way, this was procrastination to avoid figuring out how to deal with the pocket/yoke situation.

The side-backs were much easier, lacking pockets. I just turned under the yoke lining and stitched it to the gathers of the skirt panel, and double folded the outer fabric to make a more stable band for eventual buttons.

Just sit there and think about what you've done.

Not pictured: a very horrible, bad, terrible, no-good night. The deep yoke on this skirt looks great when it lies smoothly, but when I tacked the lining to the gathered section, I inadvertently cinched it just tighter than the outer layer, which made the yoke bag pretty dramatically right over my stomach.

I pinned the skirt on the instant it could be called 'nearly wearable,' took a few photos to check the fit, and more or less burst into tears when I looked at them. I looked dumpy, and the baggy yoke emphasized how not-willowy I am—and despite a few years of slowly, cautiously engaging with the hows and whys and wherefores of disliking my body shape (think strong like ox but miniature), I still want to look like I live on pickled ginger and morning dew. And this skirt, which I had so painstakingly constructed off a waistband I knew I liked and in a style I knew felt good, did not favor that illusion at all.

So. Thanks, I guess, to this skirt for pointing out that I have more to do on the body image front. (Also, I took it to a friend to ask for help, and we figured out the issue with the yoke lining, and the bagging immediately vanished when I released the seam and moved the lining up a touch.)

And then it got to hang for a few days to let the fabric stretch and settle.

Noodles.

Meanwhile, I tore some of the leftover red cotton from my fighting coat into 2(ish)-inch strips, and eked out just enough 5-inch strips from the remainder of the muted teal to make an extension. The skirt as cut ended up somewhere between low-knee and tea length, and I was hoping for something closer to my ankles. By this point, I'd also accepted that the corduroy-lined wrap belt wasn't going to happen on this skirt, so I cannibalized the piece I'd cut from the linen to make up the final ten inches of extension.

Did you know 10 yards is a lot?

And then I seamed all the strips of each color end to end to make two very very very long strips (this skirt has a ten-yard hem. No, I am not exaggerating. It is a longer hem than my bliaut), which I then pinned to each other down the length to machine-sew, because I have a deadline and there is no material benefit to hand-piecing ten yards of skirt extension.

I also machine-sewed the extension to the skirt, and zigzagged the seam with two torn edges, as the one more likely to fray itself into oblivion. The other seam I'm leaving alone, to see how it wears. Eventually, I'd like to do some embroidery on the red panel, and I can use that to tack down the raw edges further.

I actually love working buttonholes.

And then, buttonholes! I found eight matching buttons in my stash, probably nabbed from a shirt I took apart for fabric, eyeballed the spacing and fiddled with pins to see how far down the skirt needed to open—not as far as I'd expected!—and marked positions with pins. I stitched around the proposed hole with a very large (two or three stitches per side) backstitch, to define the hole and stabilize the layers, then sliced each one open with my seam ripper and worked a firm buttonhole stitch around the edge in doubled thread. They feel very substantial, which pleases me.

Swoon. Lovely buttons.

Attaching buttons went quickly, and I managed to get the thread shanks the right length to settle the buttonholes under smoothly.

I eyeballed those darts, because I am allergic to doing things properly.

And THEN, after my small crisis of appearance halfway through construction, I discovered that the waistband was in fact too loose at the top, and wasn't holding the skirt high enough on me. So I fiddled around with some back darts until I got the right amount of fabric taken up (close to four inches, when I was done) and the right length of dart.

Those I backstitched, very small and firm, down the visible pleat and back up the underlapped pleat, to make little triangular stitched details out of the darts. The extra seaming also helped flatten the rather excessive layers of yoke + lining + yoke + lining + yoke + lining (that's six layers of linen).

These are different garments, which I made about two years removed from each other.

And after a rather lovely date, I came home and flopped on the floor...and discovered that I'd lifted the color scheme and ratio directly from my fighting coat. (Not terribly shocking, since the red is the exact same fabric. But clearly I have a predilection.)

Stay tuned for further Batshit Wishlist shenanigans. The deadline looms.

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