Wednesday, February 10, 2016

The Long, Comfy, Reversible, Traveling, Skirt

For some reason, I very rarely wear sweatpants. I'm not sure why, I just don't. As far as lounge wear goes, in my opinion, there is nothing more comfortable than a long, soft, full, elastic-waist skirt. All of my skirts that fit this description are getting kind of. . .worn. (how many tears can a skirt have before it's officially worn out?) So, I decided an ultra-comfortable maxi skirt would be just the thing to make out of my remaining pretty grey knit fabric.


I folded my fabric in half and laid my brown taffeta button-front skirt on top of it to use as a pattern. I cut out the front and back of the skirt this way. For the waistband, I cut a strip of fabric a couple inches smaller than my waist measurement and 4x wider than my desired waistband width. Then I cut out 4 pockets, not 2, but 4. Why? Because this skirt was going to be reversible. 


On the (almost) solid grey side, I sewed on striped pockets. On the striped side, I sewed (almost) solid grey pockets. I sewed up the side and center back seams with french seams, which I then stitched down to look like flat-felled seams. (As that was easier with this fabric than normal flat-felled seams would have been.) 


I hemmed the skirt toward the striped side of the skirt, so when the skirt is worn with the striped side showing it looks like there is a grey band around the bottom of the skirt. 


For the waistband, I sewed my rectangle of fabric into a circle, then folded it over, grey side showing, and sewed it to the top of the skirt. When I'm wearing it, the waistband gets folded over again so it's not so wide. After about 3 hours, cut out to hemming, I had an incredibly comfy new skirt. The next day I was off on a mini road trip with my mom and fire-fighter brother.


This skirt was perfect for a 6-hour car trip. Day one, I wore it striped side out.


We drove to Indianapolis, ate supper, then settled into our hotel room for a night of board games. Day two, we explored Indianapolis, both by car and on foot down town.


We saw the Indiana State Capitol building.


And this really cool looking Civil War monument in a circle in the middle of the city.


We ate lunch sitting on the steps of it.


I wore my skirt grey side out.


It was just as comfy the second day.


Up close, the monument was even more impressive than it was from the street. Apparently,  underneath it there was a Civil War Museum. Unfortunately, we didn't have time to see that as my brother had to be somewhere to take a test (oh, yeah, the whole reason for our trip). So, my mom and I dropped him off, then hit a couple fabric stores (why not?). We picked him up a few hours later and then headed home. Spending time with my little brother, and fabric shopping with my mom, Yeah, it was a pretty good weekend.  

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