Busy hands | Disquiet mind

Seamwork's Christina is that wardrobe staple; the pencil skirt. This one is a little different with a curved hem, faced back split, and invisible centre-back zip. The Bonus pattern is a more conventional pencil skirt, with pockets. I took the side pockets and added them to the base skirt. This is a non-stretch woven, close-fitting skirt. So first things first.

( Details )

Seamwork's Christina straight skirt, fitted, finished, front 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