About a month ago i pulled apart a skirt i’d made back in 1999.  I think it was only the 3rd thing i made when i returned to sewing as an adult.  I could just imagine my grandmother rolling her eyes as i tediously pulled out every single seam, but i really wanted to save the skirt.

Tonight, finally, i had the time to sit down and sew it back to together.  I’d cut out the pattern pieces last month, too, but i’d just never gotten the hours-at-a-stretch block of time i needed to get the sewing done.

Simplicity #9569 -- made uncounted times

The pattern i used was this one: Simplicity #9569 (do not be deceived that the envelope says it’s a 2-hour pattern — the sewing alone took me FOUR).  I’ve made this pattern … lots. I’ve made it in 4 of the 6 styles, too.  I haven’t made either the straight- or A-line mini-skirt, because i don’t like wearing skirts that short anymore.  But i like the straight-line knee-length as a sophisticated skirt for work and i like the A-line knee-length for pretty much everything, but especially with t-shirts.  I’ve made the long straight-line skirt with swishy fabric (faux satin & faux velvet).  I did try a long straight-line skirt in a heavy fabric, thinking it would make a nice pencil skirt, but it didn’t — turned out to be hard to walk in even with side slits.  I’m going to chop it off to make a knee-length skirt.

The iteration i made tonight was the 1st long A-ling skirt.  The skirt i unsewed was originally a long A-line, but back when i started sewing i wanted things simple, so it was an elastic waistband.  Which was great for awhile, but these days i prefer clothes that fit my body a little better and the looseness of that skirt (and the other, oh, 7 i’d made to the same pattern) was starting to drive me nuts.  Also, i’ve gotten wicked good at putting in zippers.

Four of the 8 skirts have been / will be cut down into the long straight-line pattern.  Two have been cut down into A-line knee-length skirts.  There were just 2 left, and i wanted those to be long A-lines.  Now i have just 1 more to go.

finished skirt -- 1 down, 1 to go

Here’s the finished product — not looking so hot in part because i don’t have great lighting anywhere in the house for taking pictures of clothes, and also because my phone’s camera doesn’t have sharp colors.  You can sort of see that the waist still has a wrinkly effect from having lived as an elastic waistband for 10 years.  You can’t quite see that there is a slit on each side seam, to make it easier to walk.  Also, the 1 modification i make to this pattern is to make it a bandless skirt.  I like the smooth line of having no waistband.

The biggest reason this picture doesn’t look so hot, however, isn’t lighting or camera: it’s that the fabric is faded almost to nothing.  (Which also made the fabric flimsy and difficult to work with as i cut out the pattern and did the sewing.)  The skirt this cloth was originally made into was, as i said, 10 years old.  And the cloth was 10 years old before i ever made it into the original skirt in the 1st place.  I bought the cloth when i was still in high school because i absolutely fell in love with it.

And that’s why i wanted so badly to save the skirt and make it into something i’d want to continue to wear for awhile.  Because even tho’ the cloth looks like this these days:

faded cloth

Once upon a time, the cloth looked like this:

cloth in its original glory -- such rich colors!