Stuck on sewing

It is like an addiction.  I start one project, finish it, and just seem to find something else to do.  I have a notebook full of drawings of things I want to copy, or project ideas I thought of and jotted down.  Today I made a cape, fixed some shorts with a hole in the butt, and almost finished a doll whose clothes I will make tomorrow.  Also on the agenda for this week - fix the curtains upstairs or maybe make new ones, make at least one more tunic dress (so comfy!), as well as finish the scraps shirt I began at the end of April.  And I really should go to the dentist soon. 

Rain day project

March was hugely overwhelming with activities.  I'm glad it's past and I can get some of this art in my head out into the real world.  There is something very satisfying about thinking about a project for so long and then having time to make it a reality.  Yesterday school was canceled because there was no power for the second day in a row (the first day we held class for the entire day without power, with all the doors open for a breeze, letting in the rain and wind - at least we had water!), so I spent some quality time with my sewing machine and playing with fabric dye.

I have a small collection of ankle length skirts that I want to turn into dresses.  One of them was a hugely ugly salmon color, a simply designed rayon thing with big pockets that I think my mom picked up at the goodwill or somewhere.  I don't have a picture of the original article because I only thought to share the project after I had finished, so I cheated and took photos of the scraps left over - gah, see how gross this color is?

Salmon looks great on me, but I really detest the color, and I couldn't just give it away - look at the detail on the skirt embroidery!  It had to become a casual house dress (i.e. something I would wear at home and to the beach, but probably not out to a restaurant), so I cut some arm holes down the sides, maintaining the elastic in the waistband to make the top stretchy just in case.

I cut out the pockets that were luckily made out of the same fabric, and cut them into strips to fake some bias tape to make the straps.

I pot-dyed it with brown and green, the combination of which has hidden most of the hideous salmon color, or at least muted it, which is fine. 

It was pretty easy to do this by trial and error copying another dress I have that fits about the same on the top (minus the elastic).  My one regret was to have used the white cotton thread.  It looked fine with the salmon color, but after dying it was pretty obvious how crooked my stitching is.  Also, the dress could be a little shorter, as the sack look only works so well with certain lengths, especially for short people like me. 

In the spirit of writing my blog in the style of other blogs I am currently reading because that always seems to be what I do, here is a small tutorial.



Upcycle that skirt into a dress (but you can still wear it as a skirt too, woopee!)


Do you have a lot of India style long skirts stashed away? I remember giving many away to friends when I moved down here, only to need them when I was pregnant because nothing else would fit! I have quite a collection of them down here now, several that I have acquired since moving. I used to wear them quite a bit too, but I find that now 1) it's just too hot to wear something down to my ankles for the better part of the year; 2) when I walk on the street, I have a tendency to carry the skirt up off the ground due to the vast amount of grossities left on the sidewalks here that I just don't want on my clothes and; 3) climbing up and down stairs with or carrying kids and wearing long skirts is a bad combination resulting in tripping and falling, stepping on the skirt and either ripping it or pulling it off my butt.

I have gotten tired of me as the hippi-girl with long skirt and tank top look. I have been that girl for more than half my life. Most of the time I wear knee length dresses here, because of the heat. STill, I love these skirts, they are SO comfortable, so while staring at my collection one night, I decided to see if I couldn't turn one of them into a dress using shirring, as I have been experimenting with it lately. As this was a first attempt, it didn't come out as perfect as I'd like and I was unable to add the ruffle I wanted to the bottom because I stupidly did not measure anything before making it (live and learn), but it came out okay. I hope it can give new life to the skirts you have stashed away and don't want to part with.


You will need -
Scissors
Sewing machine with zigzag stitch
A long skirt
Thread that matches said skirt
Elastic thread
Seam ripper
A ruler, if you are so inclined to measure things
Pins

Select your skirt. If it's ankle length and you're not exceedingly tall, there is no reason it can't become a dress that will fit you without showing off all you have to offer.


As I am on the small side and there is a LOT of fabric in many India style skirts, I ran a simple stitch all around the skirt to maintain the broomstick pleats and make the circumference smaller on the top. If you are more well endowed than I, or feel like you need more space on the top, feel free to skip this step. With my machine, it takes about 5 inches in on a 37 inch circumference while shirring. Everyone's body shape is different and you may need more space than I, so I'd recommend doing one line and double checking that you can still fit it over your hips to pull it on. All this sewing I did with the garment right side out so I could see how neatly the stitches lay where they would be seen.


I sewed 14 lines like this, and I would recommend NOT just going down in a spiral like I did because it became really confusing when I was shirring with the elastic thread later on. These lines are about 1/2 inch apart. Yes, this part kind of takes a while, but I felt much more secure doing it this way.


Now that you have your basic shape (and have double checked that you can pull it on over your hips - it should fit loosely around you), you can chop off the waist band and hem the top (I liked the frayed edge and left it unhemmed). Often times these things are old and nasty, but if you want you can try to salvage the elastic using your seam ripper.


Hand wind your elastic thread onto your bobbin. This seems like it will take a long time, but it really doesn't. Don't wind it tightly, just try to keep it wound as it is on the spool, if that makes any sense. When you pop the bobbin into it's casing, be sure to pull out a decent amount and hold onto it when you begin sewing. You won't have to pull it out and stretch like you do for waistbands though.


Your top thread is the same, but now your bottom thread is elastic, do you see? You will use a wide zigzag stitch now - on my machine it's the widest of the three options for simple zigzag.




Now you get to follow those lines you made earlier, but this time zigzagging over your running stitch with your elastic thread underneath and the cotton thread on top, again with the garment RIGHT SIDE out (so you're elastic stays on the inside, where you can't see it). Obviously, one should generally experiment with any stitch or technique on your fabric before starting your project to make sure your tension is okay and such and to see how the fabric will lay with different stitches. I didn't so this at all because I generally just wing it and live and learn. When you complete a line, just stitch over a couple inches, put up your pressure foot, move it over and continue on the next line. I didn't once cut my threads (except when I ran out of elastic thread and had to rewind the bobbin), but rather trimmed at the end. It worked pretty well.



Be sure to get your cat to help you hold the dress down.


Once you finish all the lines, you are pretty much done. Big busted women may want to add ribbon ties to keep everything where it's supposed to be. I am not one of these.



If you want to go all out and have no waste at all from this project, you can chop up your waist band into a ruffle (be sure to measure first or you will end up ruffleless as I did - to compensate, I took the seam ripper to the bottom seam and made it frayed as the top - not my best idea ever...). First use your seam ripper to remove your waist band elastic. You could also use scissors to do this, but as someone who has in the past fought to carefully removed an old nasty waistband without ripping the thin cotton fabric, it was very satisfying to just really rip into it. To each his/her own.


Ew, nasty old waistband.




Now cut this circle somewhere so it becomes a strip, and lay it out strait so you can further divide it into multiple strips. I made three here, but that was not enough. I would recommend at least 4 for the average width skirt. If they are different widths and thicknesses, no worries - just cut them in half or thirds and you will distribute this unevenness evenly.


You can make your ruffles as gathered as you like. Some people have a gathering foot for their machine, which I am sure would be useful for this. I just push up small pinches of fabric as it passes under the presser foot, which works okay. When you come to the end of a section of fabric, just stick another one on to the end and continue gathering. I love this style ruffle - it ended up all over my white dress for new years as well. Once you're done with this ruffle, pin it on the bottom of the skirt and stitch that puppy on.




And there you have it - a dress from a skirt. Just tug it down to your waist to wear as as skirt again.