For several years I have been working up to the idea of sewing patchwork skirts.
One recent weekend I finally got on with it and did it: both a patchwork skirt and a patchwork dress.
After such a long run up you might think it was difficult work, but to my great surprise I discovered that making a skirt like this is many times simpler and quicker than sewing a quilt.
Certainly also because I did not have to go looking for fabrics in the shopping centres; enough pieces of fabric in the tones I wanted were waiting on the shelf.
For sewing patchwork skirts I got my inspiration from a skirt maker called Kreekapahkel. She IS a real master in that field: those wonderful plays of colour for big and small young ladies. Alongside beautiful everyday checked patterns there is nostalgia with lace and frills, darkly gleaming ultra festive outfits, tiny little flounces with leggings for small babies and wonderfully splendid reuse patchwork clothes from denim.
If you are interested in her work, here is a Facebook link to Kreekapahkel's album of work currently on offer.
How the skirt was sewn...
1. I heaped onto the table the fabrics that seemed to me to go together. Whites, creams, greys. Plain, with a delicate check, with a stripe...
2. Using a rotary cutter I cut a stack of squares, all the same size. For the waist part, rectangular pieces, so that the skirt fits closely at the top.
3. I sorted the squares into stacks by colour on a large mat. And started running the squares together on the overlocker. But not quite straight: I cut the squares 1 cm narrower at the top, into a trapezium.
That way I sewed the tiers of the skirt's pattern, adding more and more squares to each following row.
4. I sewed the tiers of squares into rings at the ends and gathered the top edge with an ordinary machine. For that I set the stitch extra long and the upper thread tight.
5. I sewed the waist part together and attached all the rings of the skirt to it one after another with the overlocker. Before starting to sew on a new ring of the skirt, I turned it until it seemed that identical squares would not end up above one another.
6. Into the waistband I put a wide elastic, and I hemmed the bottom edge.
Sewing a patchwork skirt seemed so simple and inspiring that in the same burst I took on sewing a patchwork dress as well.
I plan to write at a little more length about sewing the patchwork dress and to add pictures by way of explanation.
I have no strength for it today, but if you are interested, visit me again 🙂
