Skirt #28 // Refashion #28 :: Colorblocked

Wow! My refashion count has finally caught up to my skirt count! That calls for a little celebration. Oh wait, I am behind on celebrating Challenge: Ridiculous. One thing at a time, girlio.

Anyways, here's my latest finished object, after that sneak peek earlier this week ...


The other day I found this size 20W Boden skirt in the thrift shop and fell in love with the colorblocking, asymmetry, and geometric shapes. I have a coworker who is absolutely in love with Boden, and no wonder. Their stuff is super cute, well made, and impeccably styled in their catalogues. So maybe she had something to do with my bringing this home as well =).

As you could see in the "before" photo, it was about 13" too big for me as well as 2.5" too long (I like my skirts to fall below the knee, but not that far below the knee). First I hemmed both the lining and the skirt shorter, then treated both as one piece of fabric. Because I wanted to keep the pockets, I knew I had to refashion this from the center instead of bringing in the side seams. I simply folded it in by 6.5" at the middle back to create a back seam, and then created a 6.5" boxpleat down the center front.

(Back seam, edges trimmed and zigzagged)

(Front boxpleat. I stitched it down partway and then topstitched it to reinforce the pleat)

I don't think it's too noticeable that there's a new center back seam, do you?

Just as I was finishing this up, my roommate walks in and says, "Oh, those are my favorite colors!"

Sigh.

So I'm giving it to her. Which is just as well. I love it, the fit is perfect and I think it's adorable, but if I'm honest with myself I probably wouldn't wear it as often as I'd like ... and I like the clothes in my closet to pull their weight! I just can't picture what I'd wear it with, other than white or black or maybe gray (and I don't have any gray blouses in my closet. Or I have one thrifted one but it has red polka dots on it and I don't think that would work). So ... off it went to feed my roommate karma.


You know what I like though? I like how all the photos I took of it, caught me with the exact same expression on my face. Oh, and in the same pose.


I also ... hate to admit this ... but indulging in some non-selfish crafting feels surprisingly good!

The other thing I like is that I've now used a number of techniques to refashion skirts. There was the "skirt too big, fold one flap over and stitch on some buttons" skirt (scroll down to bottom). There was a "skirt too big, take in side seams to resize to smaller pencil skirt, and reuse hem while at it" brown wool skirt. There was a "skirt too big, take in side seams at top, cut off back vent and flip it around and overlap it in front and cover that raw edge with bias tape" skirt. There was the "skirt too big, detach the gathers and cut down waistband and add back in pleats instead" skirt. There have been several "slightly too small, will never lose the weight, chop 1"-2" off the waistband and finish with bias tape" skirts as well. And now I can add the "skirt too big, create new center back seam and center front kickpleat" skirt.

I like coming up with multiple iterations of the same concept. Makes me feel ... resourceful ... somehow. Creative. A "don't matter what item you fish up at the thrift shop, you'll find some way to reuse it" kind of gal. Sort of. But it's a cool feeling, three years into this refashioning thing.