School Project: Denim Skirt

This project has got to be my absolute favorite so far. We were allowed to pick any pattern we wanted as long as it had a waistband and a zipper. As soon as I saw the pattern for this skirt I loved it. Again it was either McCalls or Butterick. I can never seem to remember which one. They are both so similar that I don't really register the difference in my head.

Working with denim was different than working with regular cotton. As I'm sure you all know, denim is much heavier. So just simply working with the fabric was a new experience for me. Then you add in pockets, zipper, waistband, and the godets (the triangle pieces that make the flair at the bottom of the skirt) and it was a lot of new stuff for one project.

The zipper was easy. Open it up, attach one side. Close it, attach the other. Done. Took a little playing with, but over all relatively simple.

The pockets were a little confusing. Firstly because the pattern didn't say I needed a lining (yeah duh I should have known) so I had to hunt down some material to use for a lining. Thankfully my mom (who took the class with me) had some extra cotton i could use. Then I had to serge the pockets to the denim so they would stay in place. That wasn't too bad. Just a little odd, but it makes it look a lot cleaner than letting them just hang free.

The waistband was easy. The only really time consuming part with that was slipstitching (hand sewing) the entire thing together to finish it.

Now, the godets. My favorite part. Some of the sewing machines at school also do embroidery. The teacher's assistant was a fantastic help with these. There were a total of eight of pieces that we wanted to embroider. Normally, she would not have been able to help me. But because putting the embroidery on the fabric was not actually part of the construction of the skirt she was able to do that for me while I worked on construction. We used a vibrant, shiny purple thread for the embroidery that I also used for the top stitching within the whole skirt to keep the common color theme going. It took some trial and error to find the neatest way to attach the godets to the other pieces. So as long as you don't look at the underside of this skirt it looks pretty awesome :)

The only thing I am really bummed about is the fact that my machine at home did not like that embroidery thread and kept knotting it up. So the only place that I did not use the purple as a top stitch was the bottom hem of the skirt. I would love to make more of these skirts for people to wear. The only problem is I don't have an embroidery machine. Unless someone wants to buy me one for a few thousand dollars...

The zipper was easy. Open it up, attach one side. Close it, attach the other. Done. Took a little playing with, but over all relatively simple.

The pockets were a little confusing. Firstly because the pattern didn't say I needed a lining (yeah duh I should have known) so I had to hunt down some material to use for a lining. Thankfully my mom (who took the class with me) had some extra cotton i could use. Then I had to serge the pockets to the denim so they would stay in place. That wasn't too bad. Just a little odd, but it makes it look a lot cleaner than letting them just hang free.

The waistband was easy. The only really time consuming part with that was slipstitching (hand sewing) the entire thing together to finish it.

Now, the godets. My favorite part. Some of the sewing machines at school also do embroidery. The teacher's assistant was a fantastic help with these. There were a total of eight of pieces that we wanted to embroider. Normally, she would not have been able to help me. But because putting the embroidery on the fabric was not actually part of the construction of the skirt she was able to do that for me while I worked on construction. We used a vibrant, shiny purple thread for the embroidery that I also used for the top stitching within the whole skirt to keep the common color theme going. It took some trial and error to find the neatest way to attach the godets to the other pieces. So as long as you don't look at the underside of this skirt it looks pretty awesome :)

The only thing I am really bummed about is the fact that my machine at home did not like that embroidery thread and kept knotting it up. So the only place that I did not use the purple as a top stitch was the bottom hem of the skirt. I would love to make more of these skirts for people to wear. The only problem is I don't have an embroidery machine. Unless someone wants to buy me one for a few thousand dollars...