The Salty Skirt

This project should have been simple. I had a couple yards of striped tube jersey from my mom, and was planning on throwing an elastic band on it and calling it a skirt. Hey, I'd even get a nautical inspired white/red/blue/ black one and a simpler black/white one- two skirts for the price of gas to my parent's house 5 miles away. Heck, you don't even need to hem jersey- easy, peasy, right?

However, the first problem I noticed was that where the tube was joined, it was weak, and the stripes didn't line up right. So I decided to give the skirt a back seam, no big deal. When I cut the fabric, it rolled, badly. It also didn't This made pinning, sewing and lining up stripes difficult. It also mean I had to hem the skirt. Then he hem rolled forward!!!! Much frustration ensued, as well as some salty, nautical inspired language. I threw it down and left it for a week.

Then inspiration hit: I would attach a edge of wide grograin ribbon to the base. I went to the store, and the skies opened up with a torrential thunderstorm, and of course I had the girls with me. By the time we floated home, I pinned the ribbon and started sewing. It seems the ribbon shrunk by several inches, so I had to take the width in, but I got a remnant of fabric out of it to make a headband! I had to topstich the ribbon down to help with the rolling, too.



Then something went wonky with my thread and it kept untwisting while I was sewing, leaving a microfilament holding the fabric together. I've never seen anything like it!


I finally finished the skirt, but I'm not fully happy with it. It lays strangely, it's a weird in-between width, and the ribbon touches my legs whe I walk. I don't know about you, but things touching me unexpectedly are not enjoyable! I am wearing it today to see if it grows on me (emotionally, not physically. A parasitic skirt would be worse than a leg groping one!)

Punky (who just turned 7, remember) took the pictures again. Maybe I need to learn to use my camera's timer?





(This is my pirate pose, because the skirt made me swear like a sailor. I wouldn't last long as a pirate, would I?)