During the last couple of years I have enjoyed so much learning different sewing, quilting, and embroidery techniques. After working on other many authors' tutorials, and patterns I got the feeling that it was time to put all these knowledge together, and to try to come up with something of my own, something that I haven’t seen before.
As many of you, I also have an endless list of projects that I dream of the day I can tackle one and each of them in exchange for that instant gratification to makes my daily routine more exciting, beautiful, and sometimes ridiculously cute.
One of my projects of my endless list was the “A” line skirt from “Sew What: Skirts”
This time I got my book from the library. The tracing of the pattern was incredible easy although I had to draw it twice. I kept on adding extra inches to the pattern to make the fitting of the skirt easier. I had feeling the pattern was too small, and that it wouldn’t fit me, but it actually did!!
I used a beautiful Alexander Henry fabric that I bought two years ago for this specific project, and the skirt was made. I was right,it fits beautifully. The “A” line skirt definitely is my kind of skirt. But the more I looked at it in the mirror the harder it was to be pleased with it. It was just a skirt, the fabric made it pretty but I found no excitement in it, nothing to be proud of. I felt so puzzled by it… I wanted a skirt but a special one. I went through many different fabrics, and finding myself empty handed I tried to find some inspiration in my “clothes to be recycle” stash. There I found them: my husband’s old shirts. Right there I started cutting and sewing in a improve style kind of work. At that moment I only knew that I didn't what long horizontal lines, and that I wanted a main line running from top to bottom in the middle of the skirt.
What inspired me greatly for this work were boro textiles, and sashiko stitching. Before I started this project, I've been enjoying this blog. Dee's textile work is very inspiring. I would say that she uses stitches and fabric as a way to express in an artistic way, very unique, and very special. She told me about this other blog which I found incredibly inspiring, thank you Dee!
Then I made some research on my own about sashiko embroidery and I even found a tutorial for it.
Finally my skirt is finished
I can't believe how hard it's to take a picture of myself!! anyway, I think you get the idea of how it fits.
It took me almost a whole month to finish this skirt, I recycled three shirts, and I used two skeins of embroidery floss. Moreover I found the time to work on it without loosing my momentum, very important... I backed the patchwork for this skirt with the remaining shirts fabrics which gave the skirt just the right "weight" to fit nicely. This a the skirt I wanted: I feel excited, and proud about it. It's unique. It ended up not being so much as "instant" gratification,but it makes me happy.
