Thrifted Skirt and Belt

It’s been hot in Oregon recently. And when it’s hot, and you don’t have air conditioning, you tend to go somewhere that does. So I did some thrift shopping, not because I needed anything, but because I wanted to be somewhere cool. In the end, I got two things: a skirt and a belt.

I don’t need any more skirts because I have many. Some have been on my “alter” list for a while now (and I’ve just been too lazy to do it). However, it’s nice to have a skirt that fits from the get-go. I got this black wool pencil skirt for $3.49. It’s such a basic skirt that it should go well with many of my tops.

The second item I got was this gold belt for $1.49. It’s a thin simple metal belt that has a nice looking clasp. I love that it’s a stretch material so I can wear it fitted around my waist. I think it’s really cute.

Revamped: Black and White Skirt

From my pile of garments that I got at the fantastic estate sale I went to in August, I selected a black and white skirt to alter. It was a dry clean only garment that lacked a fabric content label (but it may be wool or at least in part); I hand washed the skirt and afterwards saw that it had shrunk. The lining of the skirt could be seen peeking out from under the hem of the skirt. Luckily I was tearing up the skirt, and as long as it didn’t shrink again in the future, I didn’t care about this shrinkage.

I loved the fabric but hated the skirt design. Unfortunately, I don’t have a photo of the skirt in its entirety; just the top portion of it can be seen in the above photo. The worst part about the skirt was the four pleats in the front—it’s just plain wrong. I think it would make just about any woman look like she has huge hips. The length of the skirt was about mid-shin; it was likely meant to be a loose pencil skirt with a slit in the back. Basically, it was an incredibly unflattering skirt.

My first step was tearing up the black and white skirt. I ended up cutting off the top section, below the pleats, because I didn’t want to deal with those pleats. I undid all the seams (including the zipper) because I had to take out the lining as well. So it took a bit of time.

Once the skirt fabric was taken apart, I used a skirt pattern (that was actually the skirt portion of a pencil dress) to cut the fabric down and add some darts. I sewed the zipper in and then sewed the sides together. [Pause.] I admit, I’m terrible with using measurements to my advantage, so I just sewed the sides together (through trial and error) until it looked right to me. I repeated this process for the lining. And then I attached the lining to the skirt at the top and around the zipper.

I wanted to have a waistband because I tend to prefer skirts with one. I didn’t want to use the fabric that my skirt was made of because I thought it would look too busy. I decided to use fabric from the pile of clothes my mom gave me. I selected a black wool jacket as my fabric. I hand washed it before I tore it up. Although I didn’t like the style of the jacket, as I took it apart, I could appreciate its craftsmanship—it was well made. [Pause.] I wish I could sew like that.

I used a slightly curved waistband from a skirt pattern because I thought it would fit better (since when I use a simple rectangle strip of fabric for my waistband, I’ll often have a bit of a gap, which I find annoying). I did my best to align the seams of the waistband to the skirt seams; this took me longer than I anticipated, as I messed up the alignment a couple of times. [Sigh.] The last step was hemming the skirt.

I’ve made a couple of blouses sleeveless, but I kept the basic integrity of its design. This is the first garment I’ve really revamped, breaking it entirely down before building it up anew. I took my time with it; one weekend I tore the skirt up; a second weekend I sewed the skirt section; a third weekend I added the waistband and hemmed it. There was no rush (especially since the weather wasn’t quite cool enough to wear it yet). I was pretty happy when I finished. Although I can see its flaws, I’m overall satisfied with this skirt. At least it looks better to me than it was before; it’s wearable.

Sporadic Pencil Skirt

I started sewing this pencil skirt a month or two ago and thought I’d whip it out quickly…that didn’t happen. I lost a bit of my momentum after I initially cut out my material and sewed the first couple of seams; I then sewed sporadically a weekend here and a weekend there until I finally finished.

I picked up this bottom-weight fabric a few months ago at a local fabric store. It wasn’t a very expensive fabric (and on sale too—which made me extra happy); I think it was about $5/yard. I chose it because I loved the subdued blue color and subtle pattern, and I also thought the fabric felt nice. When I saw it I immediately thought it would make a good pencil skirt, so I bought the fabric (which then sat in my fabric stack for a while…).

When I finally got into a sewing mood again, I wanted to sew my pencil skirt. However, looking over the patterns I had, I only had one pencil skirt pattern that was one of those super easy patterns for those learning to sew. The end product is just two pieces of fabric sewn together with a slit on the side. I had sewn the pattern once before and wasn’t excited to sew it again. I wanted my skirt to have a slit in the back and have a waistband (which I think is pretty essential in making a skirt look complete).

So I looked through my patterns and found a dress pattern that I thought I could steal the skirt portion of it; I just used its two pattern pieces and added a waistband piece (from a skirt pattern). The pattern also used a lining so I incorporated a lining into my skirt as well. I’ve done self-lined bodices for dresses before, but had never done a skirt lining before. However, I figured it couldn’t be too hard and I wanted to do it because I generally prefer lined skirts since they look and feel so much better than the unlined ones.

Having a lined skirt did create extra steps and forced me to think a bit more about how to do things. I followed my dress directions for the skirt to a point, but sometimes they didn’t seem terribly clear or weren’t applicable to my skirt, so I disregarded them and just sewed in a way that made sense to me. For the most part it was pretty smooth sewing it and I’m pretty happy with my finished skirt. It’s simple and I think it’ll be fairly versatile because it has a pretty neutral pattern.