Hemlines and Deadlines
The nervous and the seamstresses amongst you should be warned that there is panic and ugly things ahead.
To all those on dial-up, I’m sorry. This is a tutorial and there are lots of photos!
Imagine, if you will, a more-than-slightly harrassed working mother. Now this mother is spending the day at home with her daughters (four and two years old) and running a business from home. Imagine that those two little girls have been more than usually grumpy and are rather clingy. Imagine that the phone just keeps on ringing. The children are cross and arguing. It is raining on the freshly pegged-out laundry.
Feeling your blood pressure rise yet? Now imagine that this mother, who likes to make things, plans to wear a new skirt to a formal dinner she is attending tonight. She has known about this ‘do’ for some time now and shopped for it last week. Just for once, she is wondefully organized. She has a nice top to wear, has excavated the antique cosmetics from the back of the bathroom cabinet and has even checked that she has shoes to wear, you know, ones without scuffs, broken heels or the ability to cripple the toes and gouge the skin off your heels.
Ask yourself… what has she forgotten? She has to leave at 5pm. It is now 2pm and she has yet to make several bucketloads of macaroni cheese to appease the hoards before they will let her leave for her frivolous evening.
Yes, gentle reader, she has forgotten to actually MAKE the skirt.
General opinion around here (yes, I asked) is that I am indeed a relatively intelligent woman. I have a lively imagination but have not yet (until today!) confused imagination with reality. Today, I lost my remaining marble. If anyone finds it, I’d like it back.
I’ve been planning this skirt for a week. I found the perfect fabric (black, with a gorgeous print border) which was ON SALE (can’t tell you how happy that makes me. I love a bargain!) and I bought the zip and thread too. I had the pattern at home, knew what I had to do and could picture the entire ensemble in all its slimming elegance. I thought about it so much that I somehow, God only knows how, thought that I had actually made the skirt. I can only plead insanity brought on by years of disturbed sleep, non-stop toddlers and a huge backlog of overwork-related stress.
Now any sensible woman would have flung herself screaming into the wardrobe and dragged out every piece of clothing she could possibly wear and found something, anything, to put on and dress up for this dinner.
Clearly, I’m not a sensible woman. I do, in fact, have 4 black skirts in my cupboard. (I just went and counted) But I had pictured myself wearing this skirt. It would be gorgeous, I would look 10 pounds lighter, 10 years younger, 4 inches taller…
And I had a deadline. Never let it be said that I don’t like a challenge. So, does anyone want to know how to make a skirt in two hours? I had an email requesting details after my previous posting (where I mentioned making my own pattern) so for those with the stomach and the time, here is the tutorial: How to make a skirt in two hours by ignoring all the things your needlework teacher taught you.
Start your watches folks, the time is 2.30 pm!
1. Try to find your tape measure. Fail. Decide you can manage without.
2. Get fabric out, throw everything that is on the dining room table into a corner. Bribe children with videos and biscuits to leave you alone for *a few minutes*
3. Lay fabric on table, folded in half, right sides together. Lay paper pattern on top (make pattern by taping together several sheets of newspaper, lay your favourite skirt on top. Draw around it. Then, with a different coloured pen, draw around it again leaving an inch gap between the first outline and the new one; this is your seam allowance. Cut it out). Make sure the pattern is straight and that the grain of the fabric is running up and down the length of the skirt. If you have a fabric with a bit of stretch to it, then you will want the stretch to work widthways – so you have room to sit down in it. Stretch fabric = good. This fabric? Not stretchy. Oops.
4. Decide you don’t have time for all that cutting. Remove pattern. Fold fabric fold-to-edge again so it is four layers deep. Fold pattern lengthwise too, place on top of fabric with pattern fold along the fabric fold. Look for pins. Give up looking for pins. Place sewing box on top of pattern to hold it in place.
5. Cut out pattern shape with pinking shears. Realize you didn’t match up the printed pattern so the join will show on the side seam. Swear horribly.
6. Explain to small children what the words meant. Or not. Actually, bribing with biscuits will have the same effect – they will not mention them again (giving false hope that they are unscarred by terrible mothering)… until their grandmother is visiting.
7. Find pins in the first place you looked. Accuse passing innocent bystanders of hiding pins.
8. Pin the skirt front to the skirt back, right sides together. Pin very well, just in case.
9. Get sewing machine out. Accuse small children and bewildered teenager of maliciously hiding all the extension cables in the house. Telephone partner to demand he supply one immediately. Meekly follow instructions to unplug extension cord from the hairdryer. Where it lives.
10. Realize all bobbins are full of bright pink thread, yellow thread, white thread. Try to convince yourself that it won’t show.
11. Unwind and throw away miles of pink thread from bobbin. Search for black thread to fill bobbin. Find two empty bobbins lurking in the bottom of the sewing box.
12. Fill bobbin, adjust tension. Offer sacrifice to the Sewing Gods in gratitude for lovely new Bernina sewing machine. Sew side seams. Yes, there is going to be a zip on the hip seam, don’t worry, just sew the side seams all the way up. Trust me.
13. Wrestle the ironing board, plug in iron. Press open the side seams. Fold up the bottom edge (it is a selvedge, you should really trim it off. Don’t.) Fold up bottom edge again to form bottom hem. Press well. Forgo pinning, hope for the best.
14. Sew up hem. Refuse offers of help from small children who want to stand on the foot pedal and “look after the pins for you, Mummy”
15. Locate zip. Bribe small child to relinquish zip by offering biscuits, more Bob the Builder and assorted menaces.
16. Lay closed zip FACE DOWN on inside side-seam of either hip. Pin like a woman possessed.
17. Miraculously find zipper foot in the first place you look. Sew in zipper, going back and forth across the bottom of the zip a few times (yes, sew zipper in over the sewn seam. Trust me). Realize it is now 4pm and you still haven’t cooked dinner.
18. Shout instructions to 14 year old on how to boil water and where you keep the pasta.
19. Shout AT 14 year old for not being able to find things unless they jump up and bite him.
20. Realize you have entirely lost the original presser foot.
21. Accuse partner (newly returned home) of moving the presser foot. Refute all allegations of hysterical behaviour. Cite completely unrelated instances of previous misdemeanours as proof that he might well have taken said foot.
22. Thank small child for finding Mummy’s presser foot under the dining room table.
23. Turn down, and press with hot iron, top edge (waist) equally all round. This can be done by measuring with a tape measure. Should you be unable to find a tape measure you could: a) blame anyone daft enough to still be in the same room as you, or b) get a pen, mark an arrow on the side of your hand, measure from tip of finger to ink mark thus:
24. Sew in place about one inch down from top edge, starting at the non-zip seam. This means you will sew from (example) left hip seam to right hip seam across what-will-be the front of the skirt. And then you will go back and sew from left hip seam to right hip seam across what-will-be the back of the skirt. You will find, if you are shaped anything like me, that the waist-band hem is not quite the right shape to sew down if you match up the seams. This is because the seams are not parrallel (not in my skirt anyway, this is an A-line skirt and I go in slightly at the waist) You will be turning down the waist band at the top of the zip. (Yes, the zip is still behind the sewn up side seam. Trust me.)
25. Trim off excess fabric from waist band hem. Pinking shears are your friend. Not only do they remove the need for overlocking in slap-dash sewing but they can also help you to make pretty gift tags from last year’s Christmas cards. I am a woman of many talents.
26. NOW you can unpick that side seam to expose the hidden zipper. If you sewed back and forth across the base of the zipper a few times then it doesn’t matter if you just snip the threads thus:
27. Try on skirt. It will probably be floppy around the waist. This is normal. You need darts. Fold the skirt in half longways, stick pin in the middle of the back waistband. Fold again, stick two pins in the back waistband, halfway between original pin and side seams. Unfold. The two pins you just put in mark the position of the back darts- they are equally spaced between the centre of the waistband and the side seams. Pinch together the fabric either side of the dart, my darts are about 2 inches wide. Pin them and sew them 4 inches deep. Like this:
27. Attempt to locate hook and eye fastener to sew in by hand, above the top of the zipper. Realize you don’t have any. Sob. Remove safety pin from the unmended trousers in your wardrobe. Pin top of waistband together. Press skirt. It is now 4.30pm.
28. Put clothes on and apply make up while assembling macaroni cheese.
29. Apologize to family for being horrible. Assure them you love them all. Scream as small child covered in macaroni cheese attempts to hug you and your new black skirt.
30. Notice the time. Locate handbag. Realize carkeys are missing. Accuse family of hiding keys…
