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

Overall, it was an easy enough thing to sew, it's just that there was so much of it to sew.  I am no stranger to sewing patchwork, and do normally enjoy it, but the scale and weight and lint of this was more than usual for me.

A big factor in the lint was because I decided that, even though this would be lined, I still wanted the edges of the patches to be serged.

I started by thinking I could sew the patches together, with ¼" seam allowances, and then serge those seams separately, so I could press them open later, to reduce bulk for later sewing.  And I may have done just that with cotton patchwork in the past, but, some of these heavier fabrics?  Weren't cooperative.  There are some of the serged seam allowances that are serged together whether I wanted them to be that way or not.  After completing the first half of the skirt front, I sat down and serged the top and bottom edges of every remaining patch; after they were sewn together into strips and pressed, I then serged the long edges of those strips before sewing them to the next strip.  I also eventually turned on a small fan and wore a mask, because of the lint generated by the serger blade.  So much lint.

I had started this project with white thread in the serger, because I knew it would never be seen, but then I started thinking of how much serger thread this project would end up using, so I switched to green, a color I don't think about putting in my serger often. (I later realized that the other fabrics I have set aside to use for patchwork would also work with green serger thread, so I'll leave the green in for a while.  Maybe.)

The inside still isn't the neatest, but this is a strategy to prevent fraying and not for looking good.

I had to think of how to handle the center back seam, since it needed to be deep enough to hold a zipper, but the patches were all cut with the expectation of quarter-inch seams.  I didn't want to do a full 5/8" seam in the center back and have those patches end up obviously narrower than the rest.  I settled on sewing long strips of cotton to the patch panel edges with a narrow seam, top stitched down for strength, and cut to give enough width for a seam allowance that would work with the zipper.  I probably could have added it only to the area where the zipper would be, but I didn't think of that until after the skirt was finished.

Here's the final center back seam, sewn with the zipper foot butted up to the bulk of the seam with the cotton.

I used a vintage light purple metal zipper, because metal seemed appropriate for the weight of this skirt, and also because I was very amused at how well the purple matched some of the purples in the patches.

You can see, in the photo above, how close the fabric used to extend the seam allowance for the zipper is to the edge. Some of it is just barely visible when it's zipped, and I absolutely do not mind.

I started sewing the patches together with the last of the taupe-y thread I had used for the last round of doll dresses, and when that ran out I switched to a light purple.  Both of those were normal weight thread, as opposed to the heavier Saba C thread I usually use, simply so I could get more of it onto the bobbin.  I sewed most of the patches together with a very small stitch, so the seams wouldn't unravel much when they were cut across to cut out the pattern.  I did switch to a medium gray Saba C for construction stitching, and at a much more reasonable stitch length.

I really wanted to do a blind hem for this, but I hesitated, because I remembered having problems doing blind hems with lots of intersecting seams.  It would have been easiest to just top stitch, but I really didn't want to.  I also didn't want to pick stitch the hem, but, if that was the only way...  Then I remembered that the part of doing a blind hem on my machine that is the issue with cross seams is entirely because of the edge guide prong thing, which is completely optional.  I put the zigzag foot on my machine, and not the guide, and had no problems doing the blind hem.

Of course I wasn't foolhardy enough to think I could turn and press the heavy patched fabric on its own.  Oh, no.  This was a job for bias tape.  I had enough left over from the recent apron project to easily cover the whole hem of this skirt, and it pressed up beautifully and contoured-ly, so there was none of the usual struggle involved in blind hemming a curved hem.

I initially tried hemming the lining with the larger rolled hem attachment, but it went horribly on the biasy parts, so I ripped that stitching and just rolled it by hand.  It's shorter than the skirt and that's all that matters.

I did do a tiny bit of piecing on the lining fabric, to save me from having to use so much more of it just to get the full width cut as one piece.

I used a different lining fabric for the pockets

They do gape a little, and not just when on my body.  I suspect it's because the skirt fabric is not completely even, because if the slapdash nature of me and patchwork assembly.  If it's deemed too annoying, I can slap some snaps on it.

I put effort into making sure that the same fabrics wouldn't touch on either side of the center seams, but decided not to worry about that on the side seams.  That subtle gray plaid was what I had the most of, so I'm not surprised it was what ended up touching like that.

I did the waistband my usual way, pressing the edge under before sewing the unpressed edge to the lining side of the skirt and flipping it around to edge stitch on the front.  I inserted the belt loops--which had been cut from a strip of fabric pressed with the aid of a bias tape maker--under that pressed edge, then folded those up and stitched through the tops, trimming away excess length after that.  My machine handled all those layers with no problem.

(Yeah, my points are mostly terrible.  No-one's going to be looking that close when I wear this, and if they are and do judge me for it, that's their problem, not mine.)

I did add some darts to the back.  They're only a quarter inch deep, but that adds up to an inch of reduction overall, which was what I needed.  They're at kind of an odd angle, because I wanted to keep them entirely within a single patch each, so as not to alter the overall shapes of things

There's so much going on back there that all the weirdnesses fade away.

This is far from perfect, and it's not at all something I had any idea I was going to make even a week ago.

But. It does the primary job of removing a large amount of bulk from my small yardage fabric stash.

And it is a genuinely fun item that I will happily wear once the weather gets out of summer mode.

One of the things I liked so much about thrifting clothes was that I never really knew what I was going to find, and I'm happy that I am able to sew things that can result in the same kind of random surprise (even if it takes five days.)