S Curve

A family member  decided to help me with the laundry recently.  I wish he had warned me so I could have rescued garments in the laundry pile that needed special treatment.  As a result a silk chiffon blouse was agitated to death in the washing machine by a load of jeans and towels. It emerged a shrunken, faded semblance of its former self. I made a replacement blouse and chose the fabric for its colors.  It is a polyester and yes, I am a poly snob.  I wish this print was available in silk.  I was half tempted to scan the fabric and send the scan to a “print your own fabric” service like  Spoonflower to  have it printed on silk.

 

 

 The blouse pattern is a semi fitted tunic with front and back gathered into band collar. The front buttoned band forms a pleat. The full length sleeves have elasticized wrists. I always choose raglan sleeves for  fast sewing projects andam then reminded that they are not a flattering style for my small shoulders.  Ah well.

Once the blouse was done and I had worn it with my magenta wool pants, I wondered what else I could wear it with.  Black pants certainly and possible a black skirt, if I had one.  A black skirt is a versatile wardrobe basic, but they always remind always me of the black skirts I had to wear for girls’ chorus and waitressing jobs in my youth.  Leather and fabric is big this year, so I decided to do a black skirt using the black leather and fabric in my stash. The pattern is Burda skirt pattern 103 from  5 2006.

.


  It is a basic straight skirt with contour waist band and center front seam with kick pleat.   The interesting bit is the “side seams” are S-curves. Because of the odd pattern pieces and darts, I made a muslin of the skirt out of a mid weight cotton to test the fit.  The fit was good except my high hip caused the center front seam to hang off vertical. This was easily fixed by adding 5/8 inch to the top of the skirt on the high hip side.

 

To accent the seaming I used leather for one section of the skirt and black wool gabardine for the other.

Some construction details: I marked the darts on the back of the leather with chalk

darts marked on leather with chalk

 and I  used an iron-on woven stay tape to stabilize all seams on the leather pieces.

Fusible woven stay tape on seams of leather

  Yes, you can iron leather.  Test on a sample to determine the best heat setting, and if steam is any benefit.  The thread used for construction and top stitching was  Coats and Clark poly thread. The needle, a size 12/70 Top Stitching.  Darts, hems and non top stitched seams in the leather were glued flat with a glue that dries flexible and is designed for porous surfaces.  I used leather adhesive, but SOBO or rubber cement can also be used.
The original skirt had zippers the entire length of each curved side seam. A 20 inch one from back hem to just below the pocket on the front,  and a short zipper from waist to the bottom of in-seam pocket. Talk about air conditioning, No way on the whole seam zipper, but  I did  mentally dither over adding the in seam  pockets with zipper openings because of the unfamiliar  insertion process and hand sewing required. And the uncertain success of top stitching through 2 layers of leather and the zipper tape.  In the end I knew I would be unsatisfied with the skirt if I did not put in the pockets, so one weekend I just did it.   I sewed the seams together, basted the zipper to the seam allowances, top stitched 1/4 inch from seam on both the leather and fabric through the zipper tape.

Zipper basted to seam allowance



Top stitching with Teflon foot 

  Sewed the pocket facing to the zipper tape on the lower side, and the pocket lining to the upper zipper tape by hand , and then sewed around the outside edges of the pocket by machine.



pocket facing slip stitched to zipper tape

   I also created a lining pattern by eliminating the curved side seam. There is an invisible zipper inserted in the center black seam in the leather.  I thought this might be tough to do but it actually was done quite easily since the stay tape kept the leather from stretching.

zippered pocket

Curved Hip dart



Skirt back