A craft thrift store visit in 2022 saw me get, among other fabrics (most of which have been used!), a length of black and white glen plaid. In the linked post, I noted that it had a spot of damage. Further inspection found a lot of damage. The moth babies feasted on this.
I did use a bit of it in the B&W wool patchwork vest--the cloth has two faces, so I used the darker side in the vest (it's the fabric mentioned as being from the larger yardage.) Between the moth holes and the...general oddness of the fabric--the yarns aren't as fine as I envision when I think of glen plaid, giving it a sort of 1970s vibe--I had started feeling rather apathetic about this fabric.
However! Ever since I made that long A-line skirt from the patchwork of heavier fabric, I had wanted to try making a whole cloth skirt, in a heavier fabric, using the same pattern (McCall's 7981, modified to omit the front band and insert a back zipper.) Since I still think fondly of an A-line B&W glen plaid skirt I made in 2013, I decided to see if I could get the pattern pieces for this skirt to fit on the yardage I had, and if I could avoid the worst of the damage while doing so. Yes on the first, no on the second.
However! Another long-gone skirt of which I think fondly was a thrifted skirt that developed holes, and I covered them up with appliqués cut from various fabric prints. (And I guess I didn't think that merited being posted here, because I can't find a post about it.) Appliqués, I thought, would be a fun way to cover the moth damage, especially since it was mostly limited to one area of the fabric...which turned into two disconnected areas of the skirt, because I had to cut the pattern pieces in opposite orientation.
I spent a day sorting through potential fabrics--all cotton calicos--and trims, cutting out motifs and developing an aesthetic direction to tie the chaos together. Then I remembered the bag of cut pieces of yardage lace that I had gotten from the free table at the craft thrift store, and started mixing those in.
But then...
I realized that the lace motifs alone would work very well. I put all of the chaos choices into a box, to consider using on a future project. The lace pieces got more carefully trimmed, and fused to Wonder Under, and then fused onto the partly-assembled skirt. After that, zigzagging around the edges, and then finishing the rest of the skirt.
Behold:
I think it worked out pretty well.
Fusing the lace to the Wonder Under was a bit of a challenge, because the irregular shapes and openness of the lace left a lot of the webbing exposed, so I used silicone coated baking paper to protect the iron.
I put on more appliqués than there were areas that needed to be patched, which has been my approach to visible patches for years--cover what has to be covered, then add more to make it look balanced and aesthetically pleasing. I did keep finding areas where a single yarn had been chewed through, but I also needed to find a balance between covering things, making them look good, an not making so much work that I dreaded doing it, so those single chewed yarns have been left alone for now.
Beyond the appliqués, there was nothing unusual about the construction.
I serged the lower edge, then sewed lace over it before pressing up and then doing a blind stitch with the lock stitch machine (which, no, I still have not taken any time to try to figure out why it's so hard to get out of special stitches, so I use the Necchi 539's weird on-the-fly zigzag width control to mimic a proper lock stitch machine blind hem stitch.)
I also used the skirt pieces to cut a lining, because I can't imagine wearing an unlined wool skirt. I did piece the corners of the lining, to save fabric instead of creating all the unused negative fabric space that would have been generated out of cutting the pieces full width.
I made the pocket bags from the shell fabric, because I wanted to use as much of it as possible.
And there ended up being a big hole that didn't quite land inside the side seam or waist band, so I added the twelfth appliqué over that after finishing the waistband.
A lot of this project involved convincing myself to use good materials, despite how much I didn't respect the wool, and that included using a vintage metal-tooth zipper for the center back closure. I still am not comfortable doing lapped zippers--I know I'd get more comfortable if I'd just start doing them. But. I have not done that.
And, the back.
It's not perfect, in a lot of ways, but it did turn out as well as I had hoped, before getting to the point of disliking the fabric (holes or no.) I will say, the hem is even, it just hangs badly from the hanger!
Looking back at the post made about the fabrics brought home from the craft thrift store on the day I got this, there are now only six (out of 20) that I have not used in at least some way. I think that's pretty good.
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