Hibiscus Circle Skirt (March 2014)

​I moved to Portland in March 2014, and one of my goals while in my new locale was to learn to draft clothes.  This circle skirt, made with brilliantly printed cotton with a hibiscus flower pattern, was one of my very first attempts!  Lacking a sewing machine, I hand-sewed it. 

Most of my early sewing projects have long since been consigned to Goodwill, in hopes that someone else will love them more than I did, but this happy skirt has been a prominent member of my closet since I made it!  When you're learning a new skill, it's nice to have an early success, to encourage you to keep going.

​One day in 2015, my friend Dwayne and I did a photoshoot, showing off my outfit and playing with his camera. ​ More recently, I took some pics of the hand-sewing and interior construction. 

Picture by Dwayne Purcer / 2015

PHOTOSHOOT

The photos of me wearing the skirt were taken at the Providence Health and Services office park, at 4400 NE Halsey Street, taking wonderful advantage of their giant umbrella sculptures!  The metal umbrellas are tossed hither and yon around the picnic tables where Providence employees eat their lunch.  We also went atop a nearby parking garage. 

It was windy, so I was very glad to be wearing my ruffly undershorts! A short circle skirts loves to blow up, so better have forethought about type of underwear.

How could I resist playing with a giant umbrella? :D

Such a fun print! (My RTW shirt, however, could use strap catchers.)

CLOSE-UPS OF HAND SEWING

circle skirt laid out on bed

Here's the skirt laid on a bed, showing its full circle.  There are no vertical seams: I cut it all from one piece. 

There are lots of directions online for cutting a circle skirt, so I'll trust you to use your Google-fu to find them if you want to know how it's done!  That's what I did. 

This interior view of the waist seam shows two lines of hand-stitching: I used a running stitch (bottom line) to attach skirt to waistband, and then used whip-stitches (top line) to hold the facing down, catching only inner layers so no stitches would be visible from the outside. 

interior waist seam

Since I was working with scraps, some piecing was needed to finish it.  I pieced the waistband together of various scraps, and topstitched it to make it, as my friend Rosanne likes to say, "a design feature"! 

Piecing at Center Front

Piecing at side seam of waistband

Interior, side of waistband

Looking at someone's hand-sewing is a bit like archeology... the history of a garment and a peek into the mind that made it.  Inside this garment you can see me fixing a wee mistake.  When I made the waistband, I made it a rectangle, thinking it would hug my hips.  But even low-slung waistbands need some shaping--I'm not a tube!  So I put the skirt on inside out, folded and pinned the excess at the sides, and sewed the folds down.  Then it fit! 

The Center Back shows another early mistake: I had no idea what a placket was or how to make it!  So I cut a slit and stuck a half-circle of fabric in it like a hinge.  Then I used hooks and eyes to close it.  Well, it works.  Not well, but it does work! 

Interior, Center Back view

And here, for the sake of completeness, is the hem.  Looks like any other hand-stitchery.