A day of skirts

Today I left the handsewing behind. I've had my sewing machine in for service, since it for example refused to go forwards and just wanted to go back and other things, and today was the first time I had the chance and time to sit down and sew. I hadn't noticed how much in need of a service it had been, outside of the obvious issues, but now it was a pure joy to just use a machine that worked perfectly again. I have counted that it was 5 years since the last service, and the machine is going on 18 years, so it was definitely time.

I started with sewing a skirt for my mother. She has asked me to do it for a long time, and given me a beautiful red wool to work with, and she also said that I would get all the leftovers from the fabric. At first I told her that I was going to make a very short mini-skirt, so I would get more fabric, but in the end we decided on a knee-length pencil skirt. I used my standard skirt patter, Buterick 4451, and just adjusted the darts to fit my mother's smaller waist. I lined it with some silk charmeuse that I had in my stash.

When I took the photo it still needed a final press, but it's done. I now also have around 2,5 m of nice red wool in my stash.

The other skirt I made today took a lot more fabric. For the last weeks I've been working on making a family tour through the museum, with a focus on children. In the tour I'm making stops in the 16th, 17th and early 20th century, and of course I wanted to look the part. I managed to find everything I needed for the 16th and 17th century outfits by combining my own and the museum's stash of clothes and costumes, but it turned out I couldn't find a suitable skirt for the early 20th century. All the skirts in the museum were made for girls in size S, which I'm definitely not. Today I went to an op-shop and found a pair of suitable curtains in a quite heavy cotton. They also had a nice deep hem. I cut off the curtains, so that I could keep the hem and then pleated them into a waistband. I'm not joking when I'm saying that this was probably my quickest historical project ever.

I also have enough fabric leftover that I would be able to make a matching bodice for the skirt.

So, two totally unplanned and quick projects finished in a day.