Saturday, February 2, 2013

Glitter, glitter everywhere

On my sewing room floor, on my hands and hair, even on my face!  God knows what this fabric is doing to my machine, and for sure I'll need a new needle after sewing this.  But soon you will be able to say hello to Diana.  This skirt is a first for me, in that I severely altered the pattern.  How can you alter such a simple pattern, you ask?  Well, I've always been envious of those reviewers who casually mention the extensive alterations they've done to their pattern.  Me, if it doesn't fit, I usually toss it out.  And I almost tossed this.  The fabric was very cheap (I think, I got it years ago at Jomar in Philly, which isn't an exactly high-scale type store.)  But no, I persevered.  The problem is that this is a circle skirt which apparently takes 80" wide material, because no matter how hard I tried, I could not fit the pattern on the fabric.  Finally I just cut "most" of it and then graded down to the edge of the fabric.   Mathematically precise as is my habit (snort).  Then the pattern calls for rib knit for the busk.  Rib knit!  Moi!  Not in my lifetime.  So I just used the same fabric from my meager little scraps.  This rib knit is supposed to hold the skirt up around the waistline.  I can't even begin to imagine how lightweight the fabric would have to be (toilet tissue comes to mind) in order for the skirt to stay up with a little piece of rib knit holding it in place.  So I added my usual elastic waist.  Now it's on the dummy (no, not me, the other dummy) being hemmed - 2 /2 inches here, 1 inch there, etc. Now with all this verbiage you may not have noticed that at no time have I mentioned that I actually altered the paper pattern.  No, I just cut the fabric.  But now I will go back and alter the actual pattern to see if I can get the darn thing to fit on reasonably wide material.  Now that I know the garment will be wearable. After the fact, you see.  Business as usual!  I'm going to call it "Milky Way" because of all that glitter.

3 comments:

ACorgiHouse said...

OK, now I'm dying to see not only the skirt, but the mess. You MUST take photos before the Milky Way is cleaned up! I want to know what it is like to sew in a galaxy far, far away :)

BeaJay said...

Sounds interesting - can't wait to see the final product!

pdiddly said...

look forward to seeing the end result.