Random Patchwork Skirt. A Different One.

A bit over a year ago, I picked up a bit of printed velveteen from the craft thrift store free table.  I rolled it up and tucked it into the side of the fancy small yardage drawer, so it was in view when I started pulling fabric from that drawer to make room so the sides of the drawer would stop creaking whenever I put anything away.  I figured I would never make doll clothes, or the hypothetical upper collar, from it like I'd thought, so into the potential patchwork pile it went.  It was quickly joined by a blue soft brocade remnant, which I'd gotten in a destash from a local doll person, that had a tag declaring it to be Pendleton Wool, and on steep reduction in price.  Pieces of the blue left over from the bed cover I made at the end of 2019 matched well, too.  Some olive green fine wale corduroy also came out of the small yardage drawer, although I hadn't initially thought of using any of the "doll pants" fabric.  I don't think I had ever used it for doll pants, either, so, might as well use it in this.

That still didn't seem like quite enough fabric, so I got into the larger yardage, and came out with the rest of the black brocade of unknown fiber content used for a bustier and waist cincher a few years ago.  I had a vague idea this would all go into a shorter A-line skirt, and adding the brocade made it all seem like an appropriate quantity of fabric.

I folded one corner of the velveteen remnant to determine the patch size (measure? me?), getting two full squares plus a bit extra from it.  I ended up with about 36 full size squares, plus all the odd pieces left over, and it was plenty to make view A from New Look 6843 (with the waistband borrowed from Simplicity 9851, like the previous patchwork A-line skirt.)

(I did omit belt loops, because this skirt wasn't going to be anywhere near as heavy as the last one.)

Oh, right. More doll clothes.

 I'm working on another patchwork thing for me, but I did sew some more doll clothes this week

Posting to keep accountable.  I used up all of everything but the olive green floral, so that's nice, too.

Patchwork Vest: This Time the Theme is Wool

In 2022, I made a patchwork vest from Halloween print cottons, and in 2023 I made the same pattern from a variety of not-exactly-Valentines-Day cottons.  When I was clearing out the bulky wool scraps and remnants from the small yardage drawer--much of which went into the skirt I made last week--I sorted some into a pile of black and white blends.  I knew there wasn't enough to make another skirt, of any length, but I figured there would be enough for the front of a vest.  I didn't want to use New Look 6514 again, though, because I didn't think the princess seams would be appropriate. Simplicity 9630 is a much simpler design, especially if I leave out the front darts.

It's a Cinch

 So, in the previous post's ramblings, I mentioned that I did not have a good belt.  Although I don't go to thrift stores much at all anymore, I do want to try to remember to look for a leather belt whenever I do go.

I did realize, though, that I do have some odds and ends of leather, and wondered if any of the pieces were large enough, and heavy enough, to cut a stopgap belt from?

Now, I have read about what you're supposed to do to properly finish a leather belt, and it requires a lot of specialized equipment that I can't think of a jury-rigged alternative to use, so this is far from a proper belt, but it looks, at a glance, like a belt.

The leather is slightly thin and slightly stretchy, and I obviously don't have any rivets (I've thought of getting some, along with the appropriate dies for the grommet setter, just in case, but, at the time, I couldn't think of what I'd actually use them for), but I feel like I did a passable job rigging it up from what I have on hand.

I used a different, thinner, piece of leather to secure the integrated loop in place.  There's a stitched overlap hidden under that piece of leather.

I know that, ideally, it would have been done with an extension of the part that's folded back to secure the buckle, but I was eking out as much length as possible and didn't have that much length to spare.  This ended up 40" long.  I have no idea if that's how long it should be, compared to my waist.  It does look like it should be fastened in the center most hole, which I can make happen by putting one more grommet in, so the hole I put in where I want it fastened in in the center.  I probably won't do that.

 

 

 

 

 

Random Patchwork Skirt

The previous skirt-fix project I posted was done during a pause in a longer-term project (which took...like...five days from start to finish. That's a long time for me to spend on a single piece project.)

See, when I was putting the fluffy gray cloth--recently used for a doll dress--back into the "fancier and heavier small yardage for potential doll use" drawer, the side of the drawer creaked, because there was so much fabric stuffed into it.  There were a lot of wool and heavier cotton remnants left over from other projects, which meant it was not suitable to donate to the craft thrift store.

So! Time for a patchwork project!

I took out all of the wool bits and started sorting them by coordinating colors, and then realized that a large interior decorating cotton print sample had colors that matched (roughly) one group of colors, so I added that and used it to pull some more pieces of fabric from the heavy cotton part of the drawer.

At this point, I knew I wanted to make a long A-line skirt, so I needed some more fabric, and delved into my larger yardage 'heavier fabric' shelf...which I ended up removing all the fabric and re-stacking.  And then doing that for six other sections of my larger cloth storage shelves.  But!  I found two more pieces that would work, in terms of color and weight, and that felt like it would be enough for the skirt I envisioned (because of course I did not do any kind of measurement or math or other calculations to figure out if it would be.)

I used a 4½" quilt ruler and rotary cutter to cut the first dozen or so patches, then changed over to using one of those rotary cut pieces as a pattern piece to cut the rest with scissors.  I also set aside a strip of one of the fabrics I'd chosen, from the larger yardage storage, to use for the waistband--it was a printed plaid cotton twill that I had to convince myself to use, purely because I figured cotton would be more comfortable at the waist, where there could be potential skin contact, than wool or wool blends would be, and if I was going to use it at the waist then I should use it in the patchwork part, too, as much as I don't generally like the idea of printed plaid (I had only been keeping it to use as a potential strength layer inside other projects.) (I will say, though, once I started working on the waistband, I realized that I would have adored an entire skirt or pair of pants made from it when I was in high school, and I probably wouldn't even have noticed how far off-grain it was printed.)

Once I had most of the fabric cut into squares, I chose a pattern to use, so I could lay the patches out to get an idea of how many I'd ultimately need.  The pattern I'd had in mind had an elastic waist, which I figured would not be a good option for something as heavy as this skirt was probably going to be.  The next pattern I turned to was gathered to the waistband, and, again, that didn't seem like the best idea for anything this heavy.  The only pattern I have with a long A-line skirt that is set smoothly into the waistband is McCall's 7981, which has its main feature being a button front, which, again...didn't seem like a good idea for this project.  I knew I could make the front a solid piece (well...patches aside) and omit the front button band and add a zipper to the center back seam.  I did think of adding a side seam zipper, but I wanted to keep the pockets, and I know that doing side seam zipper with pockets is possible, but I didn't want to deal with it in this project.

The other issue with my copy of McCall's 7981 is that it's size L-XL, and I know from experience that size L makes a waistband that's a touch large for me.  Which is normally not a problem, but, as I've mentioned, this skirt was going to be heavy, so it needed a waistband that fit as closely as possible, and, also, if I could shave off any amount of width needed to patch together, it would be nice.  What I ended up doing was making the center front about a seam allowance width in from the edge of the pattern front, and (eventually) adding darts in the back, and using the waistband from Simplicity 9851.  And adding belt loops. (Not that I currently have any good belts...)

I laid out the patches on the skirt front piece, only worrying about the sections that needed the full squares to cover, because I knew I could use the odd bits and pieces, that weren't large enough to cut full squares, to fill in the edges.  I counted how many pieces covered the pattern and multiplied by four, which gave me a number that was only slightly larger than the number of patches I'd already cut, and I still had plenty of one of the larger yardage pieces to make up that amount.

Time for assembly!

So, in five days, it went from this

 

 to this