I can hardly believe it!
Several weeks ago I bought some seriously gorgeous Lewis and Irene fabric with the idea of making myself a wrap around skirt. I had no pattern so we guessed at how much I might need, especially given the material all needed to be the same way up!
Thankfully mags at the patchwork basket in Newent knows her stuff and it turns out she cut me just the right amount of fabric. Phew!
A bit of Internet searching found me this tutorial by we all sew. It looked simple enough, but boy did it take a lot of courage to get started! The idea of cutting into an expensive piece of fabric…. Making a mistake…. Ruining the whole thing. Eventually a conversation with my ever patient husband concluded that the price of the material was probably less than a sewing lesson (and even if I messed up totally I’d learn lots, and could always use the smaller pieces of fabric to make lots of small bags and pencil cases 😂😂).
So, the measuring started, at which point I discovered that my fabric wasn’t wide enough for the bottom of the back part of the skirt if I worked it out according to the pattern. Oh well, it’ll just flare a little less if I have a couple of inches less along the hem. Hmm… What do I need to do to the other sections to make sure they connect properly? Cue husband again, who employed trigonometry to figure out I could just reduce the other bottom hems proportionally and my angles would work. Phew… Again!
After a moment’s panic when I thought my material wasn’t long enough to get the three sections I needed, I finally put my new rotary cutter to use and cut three parts.
After that it was easy! I followed the instructions and after maybe 3 hours of work in total, I can now wear this!
I may modify the design a bit before making another one, probably reducing the flare even more, and maybe working out how to add some pockets, but I’d definitely like some more of these in my wardrobe in different gorgeous fabrics.
Julia's Creative Year 