Festival skirt with applique silver stars

I am really getting into this upcycling lark. I made this before I had my operation. I am thinking it will be a fun Christmas skirt.

This is based on the Zoe Karssen star skirt. You can see the real thing currently on UK Ebay here for £39. That one though is leather. It works perfectly in upcycled pleather though. The original skirt is in my opinion flawed as well since it only has stars on the front. If you make one of these thats your choice. I put them on both sides.

The original is leather but no reason not to use faux leather 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. In fact my stars are metallic and glittery like tinsel.
I think on the original skirt they are just plain pink so argueable mine is better😀 Also you could do this with a different shape - eg flowers or hearts. I may have a go at that later. It feels more a Spring project.

I had a silver skirt from a previous Christmas so decided I could use this and update it by using the offcuts from my Flame Applique Skirt. I bought the materials for the Flame skirt very cheap from Ebay.

Originally I was aiming to make the Flame skirt as just copy the RTW versions ( so black, gold and silver) but I ended up doing a totally different colour way of that skirt because I got hold of a metallic red fabric which was really nice and it inspired me to do my own thing instead and I had some of the red metallic fabric left over from the Flame skirt so I used a cookie cutter to draw round to make stars. They are not very perfect stars but then it is hand made:)

 There were a few scratches in the silver coating on my old skirt so the stars cover these pretty well.

 I think perhaps this may have been better if I had put the stars on more regularly spaced but at the time I did not really want them like that so I did them random.

I am still not sure about this but there is no going back with leather or faux leather types of fabric cos it makes holes when you sew it so if they get moved it will show and look amateurish so best left alone now its done. I added a dab of fabric glue under each star to hold it down long enough to be able to sew it, then, as previously with my Flame skirt, I used a walking foot to sew these and went very slowly because I had to turn at each star point.

To sew on the stars I also had to ripstitch around the bottom of this skirt because it was lined with the lining attached to the bottom to give an invisible hem. If I had not detached it I would have had to sew through it which besides looking unprofessional might have made the lining twist and be uncomfortable.
It was very easy to use a stich ripper to detach it.  Instead of re-attaching which would have meant hand stitching - even if I managed to do that it could have looked really rubbish - so I glued the hem back up and seperately sewed a new hem to the lining fabric. This was a lot easier that trying to re-attach to the (p)leather which may have then ripped because it can only be sewn so many times.

 I very much like this. Its a great new skirt for Christmas this year and I reckon I will aim to wear it lots because its not really very wearable the rest of the year.

Or maybe for festivals?

Could be a bit much for summer tho so it could be a very short term useage, but for the price of some scraps from a previous project, which was also made using very cheap second hand Ebay skirts, its a great way to update something.

I think it would also be quite easy to do this to an old black pleather skirt with any colour you find in a charity shop or your wardrobe and since so little fabric is needed for the stars you might even squeeze enough out of an old handbag.

I already owned the silver skirt but have had a quick look on Ebay and found a similar Zara basic silver skirt in pleather for £1.10 and with postage this cost under £5 and the red skirt the stars came from was £3.90 including postage and bearing in mind this was previously also used to make another skirt, its a very cheap upcycle really.  And I really enjoyed making this.

I certainly could not buy the fabric for less anyway. And since I already used the red skirt fabric for the red flames on my Flame skirt, I kind of think of this one as a freebie. 

See you next week,

Bracken

Upcycled skirt

I was trying to clear outsome of my 

now-a-problem fabric stash 

when I found the top of a "bad-buy" goth skirt I had bought probably 15 years ago.

The black fabric is a goth skirt - top of a skirt and the check stuff out of my stash.

Only the top tho because the rest is actually net/tulle which I  chopped off but actually is also in my stash! 

Yes I am a terrible hoarder and its half the problem. 

Using this means I have not sent what is really a brand new skirt to the landfill and also I do not have to sew it up - thats the bonus of course.

 I do not need a buy a new zip etc etc. Its morally right and a very fast make.

It also clears a couple more bits from my far too large fabric stash.

I remember objecting when others have made comments on their blogs about the immorality of stashing fabric. Well then mine was not a problem. It is now. 

Suddenly!

And its hard to decide what to get rid of and what to keep. I am intending to make up as many large items as possible over the coming weeks and forget the The Monthly Stitch challenges unless they fit in with this aim. 

I spend a lot of time and effort trying to decide what to do for this challenge or that. 

Well right now my main challenge is to clear out some of my stash but not necessarily to chuck it away. Instead to actually make some of this stuff into clothing that has been planned in some cases for several years.

AND NOT BUY ANY MORE FABRIC!

or not for a while and until the stash is again manageable and storeable.

I am happily between jobs for about 2 weeks now. I quit my temp job when I found out I have a perm job with a local organisation but they are taking some time to actually give me a start date.

Thats OK because really I want a sewing holiday. Normally when I have holiday my other half has one as well which is great but no good for sewing. So this is my time to be free to sew and to delete some of my stash. I have so far been off work a full week and have tidied the garden, done some decorating and yet no sewing at all other than this upcycled skirt made from the rest of this fabric which I made the off shoulder top and my pixie dress from and its such a small bit of stash so I need to do better. 

I am sorting it all out to make into stuff tho honest!

So here is my skirt:

So to make my lovely skirt. I took 4 bits of around the same size and overlocked together and overlocked the edge that is now the hem.

 I then pleated this bit roughly around the bottom of the goth skirt. That makes the bulk of the checked part of my skirt. 

Because it frays something crazy I overlocked the now joined black fabric to the pleated fabric making the inside seam neat and strong.

 Then I found two more bits of fabric strips and used the natural raw fraying edges to make a pleated frill on top of the join between the black and check fabrics. I needed to do two rows of stitching to make this frill lie right.

 But then I had this frilly bottom with a plain black top which did not look quite right so I added the rest of the bits of fabric I still had and sewed around the black skirt top in rough strips. They are not quite straight but this is actually intended. Then I had to deal with the bottom of the zip. One strip already overlapped and I decided to leave it dangling so I added an extra bit to the other side and made a second dangly bit which can bit loosely tied or not as a feel like on one side. It finishes the strip next to the zip where otherwise it looked a bit strange and I did not want to sew over the zip and thereby shorten it.

The fabric has alternating checked patterns but to make this I had to decide not to worry about matching anything because there was not enough fabric to do that so I decided to randomly just attach bits and it works really well.

Its very much a raggy skirt made from little bits of fabric but I am very much into it. I wore it to town yesterday and it feels good its so very raggy and different to what is currently in the shops. Reminds me of lots of stuff I saw in the 80s and early 90s but not quite like current fashion. I felt good wearing this. I think being a kind of check too will be great for autumn/fall and winter tho its not a warm skirt but UK winters are often not cold. Having said that I am expecting from the huge amount of berries this year we are going to have a long cold winter but for now this is my latest stash buster garment. I need to tray and make sure the next one uses a bit more fabric tho!

Oh I also made the green velvet top.

Bracken