Striped Skirt

I'm feeling the love for some black and white monochrome drama. You don't get to fade into the background wearing this skirt.

This bold stripe has been speaking to me ever since Ikea began stocking fabric. Yes, Ikea! I am certainly not too proud to get out and about in London sporting clothing made from Ikea upholstery fabric. Very Sound of Music!

In truth, I am really preparing for a coat. This was a test run to see how I like wearing something this bold. Horizontal stripes, no less. Verdict: Yes please! Wearing the outfit out and about today, I realised that I've made something that is a lot dressier than I thought it would be. The skirt is so full and stiff that it stands out by itself, even when I'm sitting down. I can probably take it to work but it is a bit too dressy for day, not dressy enough for evening. (Besides, I don't go out in the evening more than about twice a year.)

I spent a while thinking about how the trial run skirt should turn out. I even drew some sketches.

The sketches led me towards the pleated skirt. I wanted the pleats to break up otherwise solid hoops of horizontal bands. I love the way they become 3 dimensional inside the pleats.

I wanted to do a better job on the wide waistband than I managed on a previous skirt. To do this, I used a pattern that I recently purchased, New Look 6057. I bought this for the dress, but I do love the value of the extra patterns that often come with this type of pattern. I know I complain about the sizing of commercial patterns, but I really do think they are incredible value for money. I had a serious think about using the skirt pattern as is. But the pleat idea won.

How's this for a first? I made a toile! Just of the waistband, but a toile nonetheless. It was definitely worth it. I was planning to make the waistband/yoke of a different fabric, a white cotton twill in my stash. But the white in the stripe is not a pure white so the stash fabric did not match. That meant I had to piece the yoke out of the stripe fabric.  I took a bit of a risk, piecing along the stripe was going to take away the stretch component of the yoke, but I had to do it or the pattern would look awful.

I was looking forward to my first real attempt at pattern matching. If I couldn't get a 6cm wide single stripe to match, how rubbish was I? (Phew, turns out, I'm not too rubbish!)

The toile was necessary to find out how much I needed to add to the fabric to get the seam allowances  I would need to do the piecing. The whole band is made up of 7 pieces, each cut out individually. I found it essential to mark the seam line on the pattern pieces and match the pattern at the seam line.

The toile also showed me that the sides of the yoke did not meet properly, I took 1cm off the top at the side seam and added .75cm to bottom to get a smooth curve around the whole band.

I didn't piece the facing piece, I cut that from 3 pieces to get the bias component of the band. I moved the side zip to the centre back so the facing was 3 pieces, not 2.

When I use this waistband again, I will reduce the top and bottom seam allowances to 1cm to get a wider band. It could also be graded out within the seam allowance at the top which would avoid the need to make notches, or layer the seam allowance. I made notches for this skirt, preferring to keep the bulk in lieu of interfacing.

After I had cut out and pieced each section of the outside waistband, I used it to form the pleats in the skirt. I took great care to get the pleats to match up to the seams in the waistband. I am terrible at this kind of precision work so I really made myself try hard. I think I got it pretty right!

As I was cutting the fabric on the cross grain, I had the pleasure of being able to make the skirt from a continuous piece of fabric. I measured and pinned until the pleats were in place, then took a deep breath and cut with an extra 5 cms to spare. The total circumference is about 155cm.

I made 4cm inversions for each pleat. The front pleat is 15cm wide. I did a quick drape in front of the mirror to work out that I should stick to two pleats in the front and two in the back. The fabric was too heavy and stiff to handle the 4 that I originally drew. The finished skirt is heavy enough. I moved the back pleats to roughly where darts would be placed. I deliberately left the sides plain and smooth to reduce bulk. No seams, zips or pockets.

Once I had it pleated and cut, I pinned it to the waistband and joined them together. I cut the waistband facing after that, keeping it on the intended grain. You can see how the stripes change through the diagonal.

I had a black zip in my stash from Mood. I was pretty pleased with myself for even having this one but why, oh why, did I not stuff my suitcase full of their invisible zips? (Note to self: go back to Mood). My main pattern matching challenge came at the zip and then I had no excuses for not getting that back seam right. I think I got it.

The final step was getting the waistband facing sewn down. I was not going to manage stitching in the ditch. The fabric is surface dyed, not yarn dyed, and the needle punctures show in the black sections. I decided to zig zag the edges and leave them loose. I really should have bound them, maybe with ribbon.

I was pleased with where the hem finished up. I got to make the underside out of a strip of black - just like a ribbon hem!

Costs: Fabric:  £9.00
           Pattern: £3.61
           Zip:       £0.30
Total:              £12.91