Not-Exactly Zentangled Skirt

So ... time is a thing that I apparently don't have.

Not that this is a surprise, of course. I never seem to have enough time to finish projects - and all this last-minute summer work has been worse than school itself. At least during school I can bring my hand sewing with me and work on it during lecture-style classes. Ah well.

Long story short, the deadline for the skirt came around and it was very much not finished. But I'm getting ahead of myself - let's start at the beginning.

The basic skirt was a breeze to pull together - just a circle skirt. I'll admit I was a little wary going into it, as I couldn't figure out just how a flat waistband would attach to a circular waist, and every online tutorial seemed to just solve the problem with elastic.

Anyway, the circle was cut by folding the fabric into quarters and then marking vaguely circle-ish shapes for the waist and hem.

(Pause to acknowledge my brand new disappearing ink pen - it's bright fricking purple and it just disappears!!! It's very exciting.)

Here's the skirt all laid out on the floor, looking very donut-y. How simple was that?

(Yes, I know, I really should have pressed it before I cut the fabric but there was a thunderstorm and I'm paranoid about using plugged-in things like irons when there's lightning).

I wanted a pretty thick waistband so it's a long strip about 4 inches tall and a little bit wider than my waist. Step one was to pin it around the edge of the waist, where I realized the problem ...

Somehow or other, I'd ended up with an inner circle several inches wider than my actual waist!

The fix was of course very simple - just adding a back seam to take it in a couple of inches. Indeed, this was a bit of a blessing in disguise, as it gave me the perfect place to insert the zipper.

(Not sure what's up with the lighting here. Maybe a ghost?)

Now, let's digress for a moment to talk about my love-hate relationship with zippers.

I want to love them, I really do. They seem like they should be so easy - no sewing on rows of hooks and eyes, no fiddly horrible buttonholes - just a simple long zipper that zips right up! But for whatever reason, zippers never end up being as simple as I think they should be. I always mess up on the insertion and instead of a pretty, elegant zipper I get a wonky sort of deal that looks like someone's 8th grade home ec disaster. Yay.

Lucky for me, zippers are not accurate to most of the periods I costume for, and in modern fashion exposed zippers are apparently trendy, so I had an excuse not to suffer through trying to do an invisible zip. That would've ended really badly.

Comparatively this zipper wasn't too bad - I only had to redo it once! It somehow managed to be kind of crooked, though, and I ended up with an uneven meeting of the waist band ... :(

But, at this point time was running out so I decided that it wasn't terribly noticeable and moved on with my life.

The skirt was finished by pressing over the waistband and stitching it down by hand, so it looks all pretty and invisible from the front. I forget how fun tiny invisible hand stitching can be - there's so much control and it always ends up looking so much more elegant. Sadly, I don't often have time for it, as I'm the Queen of doing every project at the last possible second.

For the swirly black outlines of the zentangle design, I drew everything in my handy disappearing ink pen and then machine-stitched thin black ribbon to it.  Let me just say, this was really, really addicting. I started at about 9pm one night, figuring I'd just stitch one swirl as a test, and the next thing I knew it was hours later and I'd finished half the skirt:

In hindsight I should probably have done this while I wasn't half asleep and maybe done two rows of stitching to really hold it down around the sharper curves, but again, time.

At this point, it was the day before the next Art Exchange gallery (which this was for) and I still hadn't done any of the fun embellishment stuff. :( Thus, I developed a very brilliant plan B - only embellish a few of the sections, which would probably actually be more visually appealing because space and such.

Then I sat down the next morning to do my AP Chem homework, and it took hours. Suddenly, there wasn't time for anything at all.

So I turned in my distinctly un-zentangle skirt to the gallery, and that was that.

To be honest, I still really like the skirt - especially because it looks like a modern interpretation of my all time favorite historical dress, this gorgeous "ironwork" creation from the House of Worth.

Source

Isn't it just incredible? This is definitely on the to-make list someday. For now I'll just settle to repinning it every time it pops up on my Pinterest, and swooning over those beautiful swirling patterns!

I'm a little disappointed that I didn't get to use my big bag of embellishments. It was going to be really fun. Maybe I'll make a pillow or something out of the scrap material, or a bag or something - just for kicks. That being said, this more understated skirt is a lot more practical, and I might actually wear it places. Maybe a church outfit someday with a bright colored shirt and a fun hat?

With it done now I can focus on starting my next big ambitious project, which will hopefully go better than this one ... more musings on that later, but for now I'm thinking it might be time for a new set of stays ...

~ Emma