"Today, we’re going to make my favorite long skirt pattern, I love this pattern because it’s simple and versatile and easy to sew. By the end of this class you’ll have a long skirt suitable for many events and time periods depending on what materials you use for the garment. It’s a great asset to the costume closet."
This week’s Project
Level - Very Easy
New Skills - pattern-less costume
Waistband casing
Which of the Four Basic Patterns - Simple Skirt
Our Story Begins
Don’t get me wrong, I love teaching but there are days when I just get the most awful stage fright and today turns out to be one of those days. First, I’m teaching a new workshop I haven’t taught before, my mother’s on a book tour leaving me caring for her menagerie of cats and dogs, including her Bernese Mountain dog who has the biggest poops I've ever seen making pooper scooping a very unpleasant task, especially since he gets a bad stomach whenever she’s away. So I’m just back from taking Behemoth for walkies and setting up the stations for the class and feeling stressed when the bell in the front of the store rings letting me know there’s a customer out front. My store manager is out to lunch and so I absently set down some ribbon I’m contemplating using as embellishment in a future wings workshop and head to the front of the store to greet the customers.
I see two ethereal looking creature of indeterminate gender, wafting, for lack of a better word, around the displays of merchandise.
“Hi” I say in my best chirpy happy sales voice. “Can I help you find anything?”
As a premier company catering to historic and fantasy reenacters and Cosplay enthusiasts of all genres this wasn’t someplace you came to browse. Our customers came with a mission and a specific lifestyle they were looking to cloth and furnish. Looking quickly at my previously unknown guests I’d peg them as fairies or maybe Vampire Brides, but it was hard to tell. Both stood at about 5’6” both were dressed all in white, unusual, but not unheard of in my world(s). Both looked like they smelled something bad. (I hoped I didn’t have Behemoth poop on my shoes – I have no sense of smell – long story.)
“Where is it?” asks the first person, who is the more, but only slightly more, masculine looking of the two.
“Where is what?” I return logically.
“THE Bra.” Says the second, by now I had begun to think of them as Fallen Angels.
Now I’m actually getting mad and a little creeped out. “What bra?” Seriously, neither of them was wearing a bra, or, I would guess, had ever, worn a bra, so why were they looking for a bra, and why were they looking for a bra in my store?
“You know what bra.”
“No, no I do not know what bra. Nor, do I care, I think it’s time you both leave.”
That’s when the first one came at me with some sort of crazy Kung Fu move, which I managed to block with a mannequin arm I had yanked off one of the Jane Austin style displays.
“Ok,” I’m yelling, as they both lunge at me, “you both need to leave right now or I am calling the police”. What I would tell the police I had no idea.
Now I’ve grabbed a second mannequin arm and I’m flailing mannequin arms about wildly trying to keep the creepy twins from going all martial arts on my ass and I’m wondering what the hell could possibly be happening here that would make any of this ever make any sense.
Displays are falling over and one of a kind merchandise is scattering and breaking and ripping. I take a round house kick to the stomach as I poke Fallen Angel One in the eye with a plaster finger and backhand Fallen Anger Two in the side of his head with the other synthetic arm. Still they are coming at me as if they did not know that Bruce Lee had passed away years ago. They are actually making those loud martial arts movie noises and there are legs and fists everywhere. I’m seeing thousands of dollars of profit falling on the ground and getting trampled. I can’t get to the phone and no one in the vicinity seems to realize that this isn’t one of the many fun activities we plan here for our customers to attend on a regular basis.
Crap, so much for retail as entertainment! Who the BLEEP were these people and why were they trying to beat me up over a bra of all the darn things?!
I took a solid kick to the top of my thigh and let out a yelp. That’s it, now I was MAD! I began pummeling creepy girl with an arm yelling that they should just get out of my workshop and leave me alone, when Miranda, the store manager pulls up in her Fiat. She was finally back from lunch. As she’s walking up to the door, I start yelling call the police, call the police. She obviously doesn't hear me, but the two Fallen Angels think she does and they scramble away and out the door, one of them has a bloody nose and blood is running down the front of his or her white outfit. The blood looks startlingly odd and out of place. I realize it has surprised me that they can bleed.
I hear Miranda come in and loudly announce, “I suppose I’m going to have to clean this up.” She does not seem happy about this at all. Odder still she doesn't seem the least concerned about how it happened.
She is glaring at me when the first of the students for the afternoon workshop start arriving. We both smile and say hello and as they make their way to the classroom space in the back I run to the bathroom to brush my hair and check my injuries. Nothing requires ice or stitches so I make my way to the front of the now full class.
This Week's Workshop
Today I say in my calmest voice, we’re going to make my favorite long skirt pattern, I love this pattern because it’s simple and versatile and easy to sew. By the end of this class you’ll have a long skirt suitable for many events and time periods depending on how long you make the skirt and what materials you use for the garment. It’s a great asset to the costume closet.
In the next room I can hear Miranda stomping around as she begins to clean up the mess.
You begin by measuring from your natural waist to the floor. This is known as your out-seam.
Next measure your hips at the widest point.
If like myself, you are re-purposing another item, in my case, a set of cotton brocade curtains, remove the previous features of the item so that you have two panels that are the length of your out-seam plus four inches long - 2 inches for the waistband casing and 2 inches for the hem. Of course if you are working from new yardage you simply cut the panels from your material.
Then make sure your panels are the width of your hips dived by two then times 1.5 or times 2 depending on how full you want your skirt.
So to make this easy, say your hips are 40" across. Divide 40 by 2 you get twenty. Times twenty by 1.5 and each panel should be 30 inches across. If you want a fuller skirt you would make each panel 40 inches wide. Since the skirt is already so full we are not going to add additional seam allowance. So the finished skirt will actually be 59 or 79 inches across, since we will take a half each seam allowance on each side of the skirt. If you want a skirt that is medium full times the width by 1.75 instead of 1.5 or 2, and if you want it even less full times by 1.25. You get the idea :)
Next face the two right sides of the panels together and pin one half inch from the edge. Sew two straight seams on either side. If you are working with a woven material you might want to zig-zag the outer edge (or serge if you use a serger) to keep the material from unraveling and fraying beyond the seam stitch line. In my case since I’m working with a previously made item I can leave the finished edge from the original curtains and it makes a really clean finished seam.
Next decide if you want to finish by hand or by sewing machine.
Also, will you make or purchase the drawstring for your skirt? If you have fabric left consider making a drawstring that is twice the length of your waist measurement. The width when finished should be narrow enough to fit through your waist casing which will be about and inch or an inch and a half wide. The casing should not be so narrow that it breaks easily. Lets cut the draw-string an inch and a half wide, so that when it's folded in half and given a half inch seam allowance it will be a half inch wide and will easily make it through your waist-band casing.
Once you've cut your drawstring you can fold in half and sew with the right sides together.
Now you need to clip the seam allowance down to a quarter inch and turn the drawstring inside-out so that the right side of the fabric is on the outside and no seams show. One of the easiest ways to do this is by using a safety pin (make sure it's small enough to fit through the finished tube.) Pin the safety pin to the outside of the inside out fabric draw-string tube and then push through the open end and into the tube, carefully pushing it through little by little so that by the end of the process you've pulled the tube completely through and it's now showing the right side of the fabric.
Once we're ready we do something very similar to get the draw-string through the waist band.
Now turn your drawstring casing one half inch under and press. Then fold over and inch so that the casing is on the wrong side of the skirt. Stitch that seam. Remember to leave an end open to insert your drawstring.
Using the safety-pin method thread the drawstring through the casing. Be sure not to lose the end in the skirt or it’ll be extra work to retrieve and start again.
A girl in the back raises her hand.
Yes, Morgana.
How come we don’t just use elastic?
“A couple of reason,”s I answer. “ Elastic is a fairly recent invention so It’s not time-period correct for most of the eras we are into, and secondly if you use a drawstring you can adjust the waist to different points between your natural waist and your hips depending on what era and what look you are creating. It makes the item more versatile.”
“I see, but there are some time-periods or situations where you can make this a really easy elastic waistband?”
“Yes”, I say,” there are, maybe some Manga situations and characters.”
“Next,” I continue, “we’ll make our hem. Remember we left two inches at the bottom beyond how long we wanted the skirt. So fold one inch towards the wrong side and press this down, then to make this really easy just fold over another inch so that you have a clean finished hem that won’t fray.”
Morgana raises her hand again.
"Do we sew this by hand or by machine?"
“Well, I answer, “it depends on how authentic you want it to look. The sewing machine wasn’t invented until the mid-1800s so machine stitching isn't right for a lot of eras. I usually try to do the internal seams by machine and the external by hand, but today we’ll do this by machine since we don’t all know how to hand sew yet. “
Now, it’s your turn. Let’s see those finished skirts!
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