Saturday, August 29, 2009

Sewing - Robin's egg practice skirt


Robin's Egg standard skirt:

8 panel skirt of robin's egg blue lightweight lycra. This is my third version of a standard skirt, and my favorite so far. Improvements include a more comfortable fully secured elastic waistband, fuller skirt (172" skirt hem, more than 14 feet, compared to 136" or 11 feet for my gray skirt), and much better draping of the skirt. I'm really pleased by how much a bias cut improved the drape, even for this stretchy fabric. Plus it allowed me to fit the whole pattern in only 3yds of 60" wide! I think I'm going to stick with this pattern and just play around with fabrics for the next one. I almost did the hem with horsehair braid, but decided for a simple 1" turned under top stitch instead. Thinking about stuffing a skirt with a stiff hem into my dance bag gave me second thoughts. Next time!

I'm thinking it will look nice under a long black top -- could even be dressed up....can't wait to try it out dancing!

Total cost:

3yd x $6 = $18 fabric (nice deal at Winmil fabrics: note Chrisanne lustre lycra is 12.65 GBP per meter!! and the dance crepe is 21 GBP!! )
$3 thread, 1 new ballpoint needle, 1" elastic for waistband (again, have nice bulk discount on elastic)
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$21 materials

Total time (estimate):

pattern making (infinite)
cutting (2 hr)
stitching (2 hr)
waistband (1 hr)
hem (2.5 hr)
hemming and hawing about design decisions (infinite)
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7.5 hrs + infinite.... Note that these times are for Me at present, not necessarily what a more experience tailor would need!

In case anyone (me) is counting, this is my 6th standard skirt. Previously:
- 1 gray, 1 black for me
- 1 black, 1 red for YF
- 1 purple for CS

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