This is my latest experiment - a circle skirt with an elasticated waistband. For those of you who read my elasticated a-line skirt tutorial, this one is made in exactly the same way. Instead of being triangular, the pattern piece is a quarter circle, which you then cut on a double fold in the fabric.
You have to be a bit careful with prints and circle skirts. If the print only goes one way up, you can end up with it going skew-wiff at the side seams. This particular print is so busy that it doesn't really matter which way up it goes! Circle skirts also take up quite a lot of fabric. You can get one of my a-line skirts out of a metre and a half of fabric, but the circle skirt takes at least three metres. You also need five metres of trimming for the hem.
The print is lots of koi, highlighted with gold.
Here you can see the skirt displayed without and then with a petticoat underneath.
I was quite surprised the first time I made a circle skirt and saw it without a petticoat. You see full skirts so often as part of 1950s fashion illustrations, and they're always drawn with the expectation that they're going to be filled out with lots of petticoats. They look so different when they're on their own - very flat, and almost disappointing.
I plan to wear this one to work tomorrow, without a petticoat. The one on the mannequin is a bit too tight for me these days, and I don't fancy wresting with thirteen metres of dress net and fifty metres of trimming to make a new one before tomorrow morning! I keep thinking that perhaps I'll buy one instead, from Petticoat Perfection, but somehow that seems like cheating, when I'm perfectly capable of making my own.
Mind you, I'm perfectly capable of doing lots of things, but that doesn't mean they're all at the top of my to-do list!
No comments:
Post a Comment