Do you ever get a hankering for an item of clothing that you can't quite visualize ? This happened to me when I bought this piece of denim at Savers and used it as the backdrop for my last photo shoot. I needed it to be a skirt.
I wanted one I could bike in, that had some pleats, but not vertical ones, and a string of buttons, and a sort of deconstructed feeling. Full, but not circular. It was all so amorphous that I couldn't decide on a pattern or even make a sketch. So late one night, waiting for the teenage son to come home, I decided to mess around with my Off-Road Skirt design. I slashed and spread and cut.
And taped and slashed and spread cut again.
And then realized that I had cut out the back so the wrong side was out. Major fail. Went to bed. In the morning, I still wanted the skirt, so I just decided to turn the wrong side into a design feature.
I pinned the parts together and pleated the front pleats to fit in situ. Someday I will get a real dress form, but for now I think of skirt making as self-upholstering my butt.
I had a lot of fancy plans for facing and hemming, but the serged edges stayed out. Instead I did a bunch of top-stitching and buttonholes on the pleats.
In the end, it fits with the vague image I had--except for the wrong side out back piece.
After all that, I ran across a surprisingly similar project from 2008 by the local designer Martha McQuade.
I never had that magazine, but I do remember the photo and I wonder how much it subconsciously influenced me. Now I am wondering what I could do with this Vivienne Westwood idea if I stared at it long enough and then slept on it for about 3 years?
Have you ever imagined yourself to be really original, and then find you are a copy cat?
