Upcycled FLAME applique skirt

There was one of these flame skirts on Ebay last summer. I thought it was lovely. It sold for over £30 second hand. I watched it for the entire auction just to see what it went for. The skirt was made of leather, but even then its quite expensive for a second hand skirt in my opinion. Anyway I decided to have ago at upcycling some second hand pleather skirts into something similar to these.

Mine is defiitely not as shapely flame-wise as the below versions but I am happy enough for now. I may have to make a second attempts at this though because I have enough material to make a copy of the silver and gold version. You have to dare to cut your fabric more mercilessly I think than I did.






There is no reason not to use faux leather for this design and its much easier to sew than the real thing. Also there are plenty of very cheap ( as in 99p + postage) skirts on Ebay for this kind of project. You could have any colour combination here as well. I went with what I had available which is pretty similar to the original but this could work in any colour-way really. I may have a go at that later.

I bought 4 skirts in total and these are the colours I went for. The pleated silver skirt I started to take to bits but then came accross the metallic red skirt so in the end I went with my own version of colourway for this with black at the top, red flames and gold at bottom so not identical to any of the commercial versions. Makes it unique of course.

To get the flames right I used the templates from the skirt made for the The Vampires Wife dresses. I cut several front and back templates and then played around till I had what I thought would work as a design. Then I took the plunge and cut out my leather bits.

 As you can see I did not cut my flames quite as defined as the commercial skirts.

That is a mistake really. I need to see if I wear this and if I do then I will probably have another attempt and make the gold silver black commercial version.








The sides of the commercial skirts were from what I could discover via Pinterest etc just overlapped and finished so I did the same here.

 I re-glued the hem of the gold skirt to finish everything off.

Also the black skirt was originally pencil length and had a lining so I left that and rehemmed - you can just about see on pictures above and this skirt is also therefore lined.

When you make something like this there is no going back with leather or faux leather types of fabric once you have sewn it, cos it makes holes when you sew it so if the design gets moved it will show and look amateurish so best left alone once its done.

I added a dab of fabric glue under each flames to hold it down long enough to be able to sew it, then,  I used a walking foot to sew these and went very slowly because I had to turn at each point.

 I cocked up on part of the flames because my machine defaults to a small stitch length which over time will probably mean part of my red flames rip off but too late once sewed. I do not expect to wear this often so it may be ok for a while at least. I live in hope with this. With (p)leather you should have a long stitch length.

I very much like this. Its a great new skirt for Christmas this year and I reckon I will aim to wear it lots.

Could be a very short term useage project, but for the price of a 4 second hand skirts from Ebay it made for an enjoyable project and also I stepped out of my comfort zone by sewing leather type of materials for the first time which entailed using my long owned and never even tried walking foot.

I am a great believer that if you own something it should be used rather than just stored. Till now I have never used my walking foot. Now I can justify owning it. I have also discovered its brilliant for sewing darts on stretch fabrics but more of that in a later post.

The silver skirt with postage cost about £5 and the red skirt was £3.90, black skirt £3.30 and the gold skirt was £6.99 including postage, so overall I may have saved time and hassle if I had bid on the real thing but I do not really go in for animal products, I enjoyed myself planning and making this and also I have enough materials to make one or even 2 other skirts or accessories. I have yet to decide what to make from the rest of my second hand skirts, I certainly could not buy the fabric for less anyway. Also if you were to take longer collecting the materials and maybe stick with charity shops and just buy off Ebay to fill the final needs you cannot find on the high street this could really cost much less. I opted for a pretty expensive route via Ebay. I also shelled out far too much to get the gold skirt. I saw one go for £1.10 a week ago.

Bracken