Doll-themed Patchwork

(but not doll-size patchwork)

When I was cutting the patches for the tiered patchwork skirt I made in early August, I had started with a slightly different set of fabrics.  The more I cut, though, the more I realized that there were two distinct themes and color schemes developing, so I went ahead and cut enough for two skirts.

The original fabric selection for everything was centered around the doll print and coordinating madras that I used for a button up shirt.  I obviously went in a different direction for the first tiered patchwork skirt I made, and this one uses the assortment of prints and plaids more centered on the doll print. 

 

There's an odd assortment of "coordinating but not" colors in the doll print, and they're reflected pretty well in the additional print assortment.  

Even if it looks disjointed.

 I cut 149 squares for this, and, after making the previous patchwork skirt, I knew I didn't want any centered seams.  I played around with numbers to get an odd amount of patches in each tier on each side, since I was again planning to make the front and back separately, to have side seams for pockets.

I thought that the seven tiers in the previous skirt ended up longer than I liked, so I decided to go the other direction and do five tiers in this one.  I estimated that would end up at 20" long (I was wrong.)  With the goal being 149 squares, I eventually arrived at a configuration that needed 150, and I was easily able to cut another square.  I used the geometric floral print that featured in the tiered Halloween dress, since I didn't feel the need to use it cautiously anymore, having committed a lot of it to that dress after cutting a little for this skirt.

I started from the top, laying out the pieces of fabric and trying not to let any one fabric get close to itself in the next tier.  I ended up allowing some small touches, but there were a few big ones that I picked out and re-arranged.

I wasn't too stringent about the side seams, only making sure that a fabric didn't end up right next to itself.  Diagonal is fine.

And there's a pocket.  Because I was keeping all seam allowances at about a quarter inch, I couldn't do my preferred approach of sewing the pocket bags on with significantly narrower seam allowances than the side seams--this negates the need to try to align everything perfectly where the stitching pivots around from the pocket back to the side seam.  I did offset the seams a little, and there was no need for precision at the top and bottom.  Maybe I should have used the geometric floral for the pocket bags, but I thought it would be funny to use some more of that beige poly-cotton.

Assembly was straightforward and mindless and I took a lot of breaks but it still didn't really take too long.  I overlocked every seam allowance.  There were and are and will continue to be so many bits of thread.

And then the tiers were all assembled and ended up a few inches shorter than I had expected.  I was aiming for 20", which is about as short as I like full skirts to be (tailored skirts can be shorter, on my little short legs.)  I considered my options for adding length.

I went with making the waistband extra wide, with the elastic only in the top so the lower bit would hang down.

 

This picture shows the back tacking at the waistband center back seam, where I started and stopped the edge stitching on the pressed edge and the stitching for the elastic casing.

That added a decent amount of length, but it was still a bit short.  I added a hemline trim of the wide plaid printed brushed tricot eyelet that I used in The Halloween Eyesore Dress. 

 

This pictures shows where I overlapped the ends.  It's not the cleanest join, but it's not bad, and it will be completely obscured by the overall volume of the hem.  5 yards! 

Of course, this lace wasn't meant to be used like this, so there's some serged-off scalloping happening up inside the hem.

As with the Halloween dress, the colors in the plaid print do coordinate with the colors in the rest of the project, but it just looks generically dark from a distance.

The back, not much different from the front, although the print distribution got weird because I was limited to only what was left...which turned out to be about ten squares less than I thought I had, so I had to scramble and figure out what fabrics I had enough left of to cut more squares.  (It was  the geometric flowers and the pink squiggles with stripes on navy printed terribly off-grain.)

This skirt is really full!

I went with 14 patches for the first tier, 22 for the second, 30 for the third, 38 for the fourth, and 46 for the fifth, each sewn in half width units that were gathered to each other before being assembled into the full skirt.  This does generate the need to be careful when aligning the tier seams before sewing the side seams, but it makes my brain much happier to work like this than to deal with fitting an entire circle to the nest-smaller entire circle.  (Also: pockets.)

 

I thought I would be done with gathered tiered cotton patchwork skirts after this, but then I had the thought that this year's Halloween Patchwork Project could maybe be another... (although I was previously considering not doing one at all, because the patchwork vest I made in May is vaguely Halloweeny, and the Halloween dress I just made is vaguely patchworky, and that can be enough.)