Hello 🙂
So, it turns out that navy blue is just as difficult to photograph as black… oh well!
I have made a skirt. This used to be a pair of extra-huge, navy blue, corduroy jeans, that I bought from the op shop yonks and yonks ago for a fancy dress party. They’ve been sitting in my refashioning pile, awaiting a new life. The fabric is perfectly good but they haven’t been worn ever since the aforementioned fancy dress party, because they did not fit anyone in my family.
My new skirt is based upon a firm favourite skirt pattern, Vogue 1247. I unpicked and re-used the sturdy silver jeans zip from the old jeans in the centre back, as well I took off and re-sized the waistband with its attached belt loops, and managed to retain the silver jeans button and its corresponding buttonhole, both in situ from the original jeans.
The pockets are lined with blue-and-white stripe fabric, leftover from Sam’s Christmas shirt.
Due to the fabric limitations, I had to cut the skirt to have a centre front seam, as well as the standard centre back seam.
Now you might be thinking; if the jeans were so big to start with, how could you possibly have “fabric limitations” in making a rather small skirt out of them? Well, when it comes to re-fashioning a new garment from an old, even if your old garment has plenty of fabric it still can be quite a trick to get even a smaller new garment out of it. This can be due to several factors, such as awkwardly placed seams, or if your fabric has a nap. In the case of this old jeans to new skirt refashion, there were both of these factors to contend with. Even though I was starting with satisfactorily extra-big trousers, they were cut in an old-fashioned, late 80’s, early 90’s style, with wide hips tapering down into narrower ankles. This is the exact opposite of what I wanted in my little skirt; which is narrowest at the waist and gets wider going down to the lower hem; plus there was the nap of the corduroy which you always want to be running down the garment, never ever up the garment. Plus there were big slanted hip pockets in the jeans, getting in the way of cutting anything out from the top of the jeans. Plus, a lot of the old bar-stitching was done with an incredibly strong thread, almost like fair dinkum fishing wire or something, making unpicking a sheer joy. That was heavy sarcasm just there, by the way. So in the end, it took quite some careful measuring and giving and taking a few centimetres here and a few centimetres there from different pieces, to get out the pieces I wanted. This is a lengthy justification for why my skirt has a centre front seam, as well as a centre back seam. So not ideal, I know, but it was the only way the skirt could be!
Details:
Skirt; Vogue 1247 modified, refashioned from a pair of old navy blue jeans/trousers… my review of this pattern here
Top; the hoodie from Pattern Magic 3, blue knit, details here
Thongs; Havaianas
D’ya want to hear/see something funny? This will give everyone a laugh…. I actually made this skirt back in January of this year, specifically for my high school reunion! and wore it, and photographed it on that day for the blog, but I never put the photo up here… I decided I just looked silly. Now I’ve decided that it’s not toooo bad, so here it is! I made the skirt because I got this whacky idea in my head to kinda reproduce my old school uniform for the reunion. I found my old school tie, which is tiny! and wore it. The other pieces are from my regular handmade wardrobe, but it was such a hot night that I left that blazer in the car…
Yes, it was silly… but it was fun!
So, this outfit below is a pretty close representation of what I used to wear to school, every day 😀
Details:
Skirt; Vogue 1247, as above
Top; the bamboo shoot top from Pattern Magic, white linen, details here
Tie; my old school tie
Blazer; Simplicity 4698, navy blue silk, seen first here, and also worn in 6 different ways here
Sandals; Vincenza, from Soletta shoes
