Skirt Saturday!

I'm still busy working away trying to finish up sewing together my vintage stash of a fabric that I cut up into different patterns.  I managed to finish 4 skirts over the past week.  One of which wasn't part of the vintage pile, but after all my fun with denim making the rug, I was inspired.  I had a pair of really nice, new jeans that my friend gave me.  They are a very heavy weight denim.  Originally, I was going to cut them up and do something like this:

I really liked the idea of using strips of fabric to create a new textile and design something new out of it, but I'm not much of a vest person.  Then I saw this skirt:

I loved the rawness of it and the varying sizes of the strips.  I didn't have that much denim to work with, but I went ahead and used this as inspiration.  

Here are the jeans before:

Here they are after!  I turned it into a super cute jean skirt!!!  I did this with no pattern at all, except I followed the directions on a short pattern I have to make the zipper flap in the front.

Here is a glance at the process.  

I ripped strips in varying sizes from 1" to 3".  Then I sewed them together in layers starting from the largest/widest piece to the smallest/thinest piece.  

I made two of these long pieces of layered denim.  

I didn't have very much denim, so I had to try to salvage more to make it a tad longer.  It needed to have a zipper, too.  Originally I had planned to use a large elastic band, but realized quickly that it would not work with this weight denim at all.  Plus, I needed it to open up at the waist, so I could get them over my hips.  I seam ripped all the gold off and used the top band flipped upside down.  

I made a few mistakes along the way.  One was that I put the zipper flap opening the wrong direction to match with the button fly opening, which is why I had to flip the top band upside down.  Also, when I cut the front pattern pieces, I should have folded one of the long pieces of layered denim in half and then cut.  I think I cut one front piece out of each long piece of fabric, so I ended up having a seam in the center back, which wouldn't have been necessary had I cut the front pieces out of the same long piece of  fabric.  Nothing that had any dramatic affect on the outcome, though.

My button and zipper fly.  I'm really proud of this!  I struggled with this the first time I made shorts.  It made much more sense this time through.

I am really pleased with this creation!  I love when I can turn one thing into something else, especially if it increases in coolness.  I also love creating my own design.  I rely heavily on patterns, but they have taught me so much.  It feels good when I can actually see that all the information is sinking in.

So once again ... here is the front (I had a little fly away string I forgot to trim, please ignore).

Back - You can see the unnecessary seam down the back :(.  Oh well, no biggie.  Since, I have added one more strip to the back panel.  It's all I had left and I wanted just a tad more coverage.  I definitely wear bike shorts under this baby!  Sorry boys!

On me!

The other skirt I made is part of my vintage fabric fabrics.  It is a weird wool knit fabric.  It's not the best fabric in the world, but my goal was just to make something with it.  And I achieved my goal.  

This fabric does not photograph well, my apologies.

For some reason it came out long on the sides, more than the front and back.  I think I did a poor job cutting (I cut all this fabric up into patterns over a year ago) and also the knit may have stretched a little when I was doing the hem.  I actually kind of like it.  It is hard to see in the photo, I think.  It gives it a little more style.  Mostly this is just going to be a comfy, easy wear skirt.  The fabric already wants to lint up everywhere, so we will see how many miles this gets.  The other shirt I have waiting to sew is in this fabric.  It is going to be a long sleeve button up for Bayne.  I hope it goes well.  I'm still learning my knit skills.  Anyway, here it is on:

I have two more finished skirts to share, but it will have to wait until tomorrow!  I made semi-matching skirts for Aubrey and I, but she is with her Pops today.  He was nice enough to give me an extra day off to catch up on my sewing.  I'll try to get a picture of the two of us sporting our cool new skirts tomorrow.  

I'm about to get back to work on a dress right now ...  

Wish me luck!