K3 and I Foray Into Clothing Design

In August, DD1, DD2, K3 and I took a trip to Shipshewana.  My daughters and I like to go once every year or two, mainly as a quiet getaway and to do some shopping.  Our favorite places are the Amish grocery E&S Sales, Yoder's Meat, and Lolly's Fabrics.  We visit pretty much all the shops, and the flea market too, but those are our can't miss favorites.

This year, we invited K3 to go along.  The thought process was that now that she's 8, she might enjoy seeing all the horses and buggies, plus it would be a special girl trip that she didn't have to include her brothers in.  We also thought she would love digging through all the fat quarters of fabric in the wooden boat at Lolly's.

Yep, she loved it.  She did get a little bored waiting for her aunts and I to look at fabric (I was shopping for a few future gift projects), so I told her that if she wanted to pick out some fabric, I would make her a nightgown or something out of it.  Well, after that it was hard to drag her out of the store!

Turned out that she wanted a skirt, not a nightgown.  Which was fine, as I've made skirts and dresses in the past, when my girls were little.

Not only did she want a skirt, she wanted it made out of many fabrics, not just one.  The girl had an armload of fat quarters that she had chosen out of Lolly's boat.  Way, way, more fabric than it would take to make a skirt the size of an eight year old.  I talked her into paring her choices down to eight fabrics.  Which I let her take to the counter and pay for, and carry in her very own shopping bag.

She liked that very much.  

In late August, we sat down together and I asked her what kind of skirt she had in mind with all those eight different fabrics.  Vertical stripes? Horizontal tiers?

Patchwork.  That's what she wanted.  Squares sewn together patchwork style.

Okay, that I could do.  It would be loud, but heck, she's eight.

But wait, that's not all she had in mind! The squares couldn't be random.  I had to sew them together in rows that would make diagonal stripes when they were a skirt.

And, she wanted a high-low style.  Knee length in front, brushing the ground at her heels.

I sketched as she talked.  Mainly so that I made sure I understood what she envisioned.  It was apparent that she had given this custom skirt a lot of thought, and I wanted to get it right.

Once we had a design, I had to figure out how to bring it to reality.  This was the first time I've ever made clothing without using a pattern created by someone else. Took me most of a month (the garden was going hot and heavy, so I really didn't have a lot of time to contemplate skirt making), but finally the light bulb in my head went off, and I knew exactly how to do it.  All I needed to do, since this was going to be a skirt with a simple elastic waistband, was make two rectangles of fabric that were big enough to be loose fitting around her legs.  Then mark the center front at the correct length based on measurements I took of K3, as well as mark the center back to the right length, and connect those marks with a curved line (around the sides).  Sew the skirt together at the side seams, make and sew a waistband onto the skirt fabric, thread elastic through the waist, hem the skirt, and be done.  

All the cutting and stitching of the patchwork took a few more weeks of spare time, and I realized after it was together that I should have made a lining so that the underside of the patchwork with all it's seams wouldn't be visible on the low part.  To do a correct lining, I would have to take the elastic back out of the waist and make a second skirt, also sewn to the existing waistband.  Which I not only didn't want to do, but didn't have enough fabric left for.  So I cheated and sewed in a liner (of one color fabric) on just the inside back of the skirt where you might be able to see when it's being worn.

But the skirt is finally completed and ready for K3 to wear.