Busy hands | Disquiet mind

McCall's M8479 is a woven short skirt pattern with faux-wrap options. I was having a hard time understanding how all the pieces went together, so I made a 'base' version of the skirt with the most common pieces and without any of the wrap choices, which isn't technically an option provided. It is closest to View A, but without the over-wrap half skirt (read on for explanation of this).

But first, why a skirt pattern? Well, simply, I need basic/versatile skirt options to fill a gap in my wardrobe. And this skirt pattern has a fly front zipper, which I haven't tried before. Skirts use less material even than shorts, so it's a lower stakes way to practice. And I really couldn't figure out what they were doing, without examining the pattern pieces closely. Curiosity, basically.

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McCall's M8479, finished, front view
Photo by chebe

After making the Aberdeen t-shirt I still have plenty of that Spoonflower fabric left over, so I figured I'd try something more suitable to its weight, like a skirt for layering.

I don't actually have a skater skirt pattern. Or instructions for how to draft a flared knit skirt. So taking inspiration from the many I've worn over the years I attempted to draft my own skater skirt.

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Skater skirt, finished, front view
Photo by chebe

I made a modified Seamwork's Pauline skirt previously. And it worked out so well that I want to iterate on it. So how about I change the front seams into zips, and use the same black stretch lamé (96% Polyester, 4% Elastane) as in my v2 Margo skirt?

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Modified Seamwork Pauline in stretch pvc, finished, back view
Photo by chebe

Remember Seamwork's Margo I made not too long ago? Well I made another version. But this one's a bit different.

A friend pointed me at The Closet Historian's youtube, and I have become obsessed with her retro-futurism and cyberpunk designs. Many of her outfits and look-books feature shiny shiny pencil skirts in a variety of novelty fabrics. I want.

But. I'm having difficulty sourcing the really nice cosplay fabrics she uses inside my tax region. So until I figure that out I'm trying out the more old-school dance-wear fabrics that are available to me, like this stretch black lamé (96% Polyester, 4% Elastane), which feels like a lighter-weight spandex coated in mock-pvc.

She made a video about how to make her simple stretch pencil skirts. But, I'm worried that for daily wear they might look more fetish than sci-fi (which is what I'm aiming at) on me, so I'm using Margo instead. That's a 16-18/XL, with the hips narrowed, and I took 3" out of the length.

Using a fabric like this requires a slightly different set of tools. I'm using my clips instead of pins, to avoid unnecessary permanent perforations in the material. I trialled a teflon foot versus a regular foot, and there are catches with both. My teflon foot opening is very narrow, so I can't use twin-needles or zig-zag stitches with it. And because the whole point of it is to not grip the fabric I need to use two hands to guide the fabric through the machine to keep stitching straight. But the regular foot causes the top and bottom fabrics to travel at different speeds, creating a twist in the seam. Luckily I was able to press this out, but think I'll be sticking to the teflon foot whenever I can while top-stitching. (The back of this fabric behaves like regular spandex.) The bonus is that this fabric is unlikely to fray, so I skipped seam finishes. I did press, and hem though. Just with a straight stitch, not a twin-needle.

It fits with minimal tension across the waist and hips, and is loose further down. As you can imagine it's not all that flattering across the tummy. (But that can be countered with structured under-garments, or a longer top over it.) I'm almost tempted to go down a size, to get a fit closer to the pencil skirts. We'll see. I guess I should have figured, from this being a dance fabric, but it's actually quite comfortable, doesn't fight movement at all. Not sure its reached 'sci-fi' though, at least not on its own.

Finished Margo skirt
Photo by chebe

I've had an idea for an elaborate electronic skirt for, literally, years now. And no matter how long I waited progress just wasn't being made. At one point I realised that EMFcamp was fast approaching and I needed something for it. So I scaled back my ambitions, found a white tulle/net skirt on sale, and got to work.

I had a few Neopixel strands laying about the house, and found to my surprise that each 20 pixel (2" pitch) strand was almost exactly the width of my skirt. Two strands would completely encircle it. Rather convenient. And I wanted to be able to set the colour of the Neopixels from things around me, so I needed a colour sensor. I also wanted a potentiometer so I could adjust the brightness depending on ambient light, and would need a button to change between modes. Oh, and a microcontroller to make it all work. Which gave me this circuit.

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But white is very much not my aesthetic. Which is a large part of why I made this an underskirt. You can use this one underskirt with a variety of overskirts to achieve different effects. Here I've used a black crushed velvet skirt with uneven hem so that some of the glowing tulle/net still peeks out. In dark enough environments, there is a side benefit of seeming to exist in a puddle of light on the ground. (Which can be handy when trying to navigate a campsite.) Overall this skirt is fun, but not the most practical. Though I do foresee it coming in handy from time to time.

Skirt
Photo by chebe

Parts;
Fabric scraps
Petticoat
Skirt

Potentiometer
Adafruit Flora
Adafruit Neopixel strands
3-pin JST SM Plug + Receptacle Cable Set
Adafruit Colour Sensor
LilyPad Button Board