11
Nov
2014

arrrggghhh! – the I’m a pirate skirt

Moonstruck Cardigan and Pirate Skirt

Day-80

Pirate Striped Skirt

I absolutely adore this skirt!

The fabric is some sort of striped rayon (I think) that I inherited from my aunt, and the “pattern” is a pleated rectangle with an elastic waistband at the top.

I started making something else out of this fabric, and I can’t for the life of me remember what it was, but it obviously didn’t work out. I took that project apart, and pieced the pieces back into a rectangle of sorts. Then I pleated the top edge into wide overlapping pleats, that I then stitched into place.

I originally installed a zipper and had a proper waistband, but that made for a skirt that slipped & slid all over the place. So I removed the waistband & zipper, closed up the size seam, and added a thin elastic waistband above the pleating.

The elastic and the pleating kind of fight each other when it’s hanging on the hanger – the elastic pulls in, but the pleating doesn’t, so the elastic waistband ends up looking a little funky. But it’s perfect when I wear it, which is (really) the important part.

Moonstruck Cardigan and Pirate Skirt

(you bet I make these photoshoots do double duty.)

Pirate Skirt

My favorite part of this skirt, is the hemline.

Two of the pieces I ended up with after the unsuccessful first project were skinny and slightly angled. So I pieced those one above the other, and put that piece at the front of the skirt.

Instead of intentionally matching that accidental angle, on the other half of the skirt, to give the skirt a high-low hem,* I left the panel my right (the left side of the picture) as it was, and let the hem take a vertical nosedive to the floor.
*a high-low hem is a hem that is high in the front, and then dips lower in the back, they were huge on skirts and dresses a couple summers ago.

I love the asymmetricality of that bit of the hem, and the edge it gives the skirt.

The downside of this, is that the skirt is very long, which means I can only wear it with certain shoes, these nude booties being one of them.

As piecemeal as the construction of this skirt was, I’m pretty damn chuffed with how it came out.

Day-94

PS. I’ve didn’t realize exactly how much TopGearUK I’ve been marathoning until I actually used “chuffed” in a sentence – I blame knitting my winter coat.

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