ginger skirt

Bonjour my friends! I am alive, and more than that, coming to you now from the residence where I provide groceries and pay for the internet. Mon dieu. 

Pretty much since moving, I have been on the hunt for the skirt. The I couldn't exactly describe but was essentially the more me version of the little 70's inspired skirts that are everywhere this season. Everytime my roommate and I passed the vintage store downtown, we stopped in to look through the skirts for it (side note: how did anyone ever wear denim pencil skirts that have no vent and zero stretch? Ugh). I toyed with the idea of making my own, but didn't find any patterns that were really what I was looking for, until I was checking my blogs one morning and there was the skirt!

The tutorial was pretty simple, the only part I found a little confusing was that some pictures were taken facing the waistband end of the pattern piece, and some were from the hem, but it just took me a little longer to re-orient myself.

The fabric is a stretch corduroy I bought the last time my Dad was visiting and could drive me to Fabricland (oh how moving out has increased sewing technicalities). Does anyone else have not-enough-fabric-phobia? I've got it bad, which is why I bought 2m and ended up using not even one. Yeesh. 

I cut the fabric out one day, and then next entered some strange unemployed, basement suite time-warp and binge-sewed for approximately 11 hours straight. By the time I went to bed my eyes were burning and my brain was topstitched mush. It was bizarre I tell you. Despite (or because of?) that, this is probably construction-wise the highest quality garment I have made to date. I took a lot of time to be tidy (not common for me), flat-felled all but the side seams, and just took care to do an all round good job. Even though I sewed the front belt-loops on uneven. Nobody's perfect.

I made a straight size 4, except the two wedges out of the waistband, same as my green gingers, and raising the pockets around 7/8". In retrospect this was a bit too much, especially given that this skirt rides up not just at the hem like a normal skirt, but as a whole, like a toilet paper tube up a hamster. So although the pockets start off just a bit high, after one block at a decent walking pace, they're up keeping the lower back company. At least I chose to keep it a bit on the longer side.

The corduroy was sweet and easy to sew, even though it didn't press, but it is also where most of the issues of the skirt arise, and that's because I forgot what we all know, that, all but the highest quality corduroy stretches out a lot with wear and does not have very good recovery.  The biggest place this got me was the waistband. Pre-construction, I decided to line the waistband with corduroy rather than the woven cotton of the pockets, irritatingly forgetting that this would allow the whole waist to stretch out; as you can see in the second-last picture, it is on the wavy side. Full disclosure: I put my shoes on before I put the skirt on, because I don't want to stretch out the waist too much bending over to tie them up.

There is also some pooling of fabric around the back yoke, which didn't appear in my first pair, but honestly, since it is in the back I don't see it, so I don't notice it, so I don't mind it.
Although visually I'd prefer if the entire thing was a little tighter, overall it is comfortable and I can walk in it, which are the most important factors, so I'll survive.

The day after the sewing-binge, all I had to do was hem it, and hammer in the button. But remember how we were talking about increased technicalities? I live away from home now, and I don't own a hammer. For a while I got a little panicky, because I needed this skirt right away while the weather was warm, but I also didn't want to buy a brand new hammer just to hammer one button. I considered a few hammer obtaining strategies such as asking the guy who works on his motorcycle in the garage if he had one I could borrow (he wasn't there), smuggling the works + a hammer into the bathroom at the hardware store; and walking around the neighbourhood until I saw someone using a hammer, offering $5 for the loan of the hammer, and finding myself a handsome boyfriend in the process, because at that point my roommate had had two long days at school and I was company deprived.
Anyways. In the end I followed the ways of my ancestors and made use of a rock and concrete doorstep. Believe it or not, I think it worked better than when I used the hammer on my jeans.
For the top-stitching, I used two spools of regular thread.

This skirt goes with everything, and despite my worried rush to finished (this was a couple weeks back), we're still having unseasonably warm weather, so it's getting plenty of wear. Here I've paired it with a Seamwork Savannah camisole, which I am hopefully going to have a post about in the next couple weeks.
I've missed you blog, it's nice to be back!