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.)
Texture!
I cut the waistband from the black brocade before cutting any patches. I could have used the corduroy, or maybe the wool, but I though the black fabric would feel best whenever I wore the skirt with nothing tucked in.
The wool hides the blind stitching beautifully, as do most of the other fabrics, but...not so much the corduroy, mainly because I don't have a pinboard, and pressing the napped fabrics on a towel works for 99% of my napped fabric pressing needs, but not the corduroy. It may relax over time, especially after being hung against other skirts, so I'm not worried that the crease will be there forever.
I once again serged every patch edge, and once again thought I could wait until the patches were sewn together before serging--I used slightly larger seam allowances this time!--and found that, no, that really didn't work well. So, I serged the top and bottom edges of every square before sewing them into strips, then pressed the strips and serged the long edges before sewing the strips together. It seemed like a hassle, but, really, it was so much easier than trying to serge the narrow seam allowances separately.
I used pink lining mostly because I discovered I had several yards of it, and also because it coordinated very well with the pink flowers in the velveteen. Not that the average viewer will ever see that.
I did take care not to let the same fabric end up next to itself at the side seams.
I thought I'd use a pink button, but this very fake shell button has the same colors as all the fabrics, more or less
I learned my lesson from the previous patchwork skirt and only sewed fabric extensions to the center back edges on the area where the zipper would be. The zipper cooperated nicely.
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