Sunny silk skirt

The story of this project is curious, and fair share of determination went into it. Back in autumn I saw this photo on Instagram. There were two ladies wearing pastel outfits head to toe – pastel oversized sweaters, pastel silk skirts, pastel heels, and all of that in contrasting colors. I absolutely loved the idea of their outfits and saved that post. Unfortunately, later I was no longer able to find it, therefore cannot properly credit them for the idea I’ve borrowed. It sat with me for a while as I had quite a bit of prep work to do, more on that later. After all, the skirt had to be sewn. And here it is, my own pastel outfit. I think it is awesome! 😎

So the start of this idea implementation was to actually purchase everything for the outfit. I only owned a pastel clutch, while everything else had to be acquired. I made good use of Christmas sale and purchased these beautiful Jimmy Choo Love stilettos at a very decent price. Then, few good months on, when brick and mortar stores started opening in April, I went on to search for an oversized pastel sweater, finding which appeared to be more difficult than anticipated. I basically ended up choosing one sweater out of… one. Granted, it is nice and fits this entire situation well enough.

And finally, the skirt time came. At first I had this awkward experience at my local fabric store. They have an entire isle of silks. And even though the selection seemed abundant, of all these silks I needed specific shade of either yellow or green and hopefully something that would not be sheer. At my first attempt I did not find anything suitable at all, not a single one! Only when I came back to the store once again, this time determined to somehow solve this puzzle, I settled on this yellow silk, essentially the only choice, and had to accept it being somewhat sheer. I decided to line the skirt with skin tone lining and just get on with it!

There are many bias skirt patterns out there. Well, honestly, it is a garment that is relatively easy to construct. I wanted to somehow avoid installing the zipper – have read on Instagram about other sewists’ struggles with installing zippers on bias cut silk. That is why I settled on Vikisews Sati skirt pattern. It has only two pattern pieces – front and back, and the skirt is held at the waist by elastic.

Cutting the fabric was real pain in the neck. Cutting silk AND on bias is difficult. But then sewing the skirt up was relatively straightforward. I used walking foot on the sewing machine and chose French seams for both, main fabric and lining. One real challenge in the sewing stage of this skirt was to hem it nicely. For the lining I tried to use the rolled hem foot. But it did not work all that well – foot performance was unstable, and especially it did not work over relatively bulky side seams. After somehow completing that troubled hem seam, I ended up rolling the hem once more and stitched again to make it more neat.

So for the main skirt I ended up folding and ironing tiny hem once, stitched it in a conventional way, cut seam allowance to the minimum, folded and ironed again and stitched again. This method takes so much longer than using rolled hem foot, but the hem looks more neat, especially on difficult to handle fabrics. It took me only few hours to make this skirt. And I absolutely love how it turned out!

For this post, I asked my husband to go out to the downtown and make few photos of my new so carefully structured look. He is my single biggest supporter in all of these sewing kind of adventures, and I am so grateful for that! So we ended up roaming cobblestone streets, taking zillion of photos and clearly amusing passers by. But hey, we were not the only weirdos out there, and below is the evidence! 😁

This sunny skirt was made using Vikisews Sati pattern. The skirt is made of silk and is lined. For this project I needed some 1.25 meters of silk fabric and also of lining. Other notions were: elastic and thread. The skirt cost me 40 Eur. It was made at the very end of April, 2021.

This being silk garment both looks and feels so nice! After making like hundred of static photos, we ended up concluding, that this skirt looks the best when in motion. That is why I absolutely love these pictures above where I am caught walking. Granted, I had to cross that street many times, but it was absolutely enjoyable occasion and great time we both had together! 💛 Am sure it’s going to be my favorite look for evenings out in the city with family and friends!

Let’s all stay healthy!

~Giedre~