My little sister gave me Rosie Martin's "No Patterns Needed" book for Christmas after some really subtle hinting on my part. I was really excited to get started with it, though it took me a while to come round to some of the designs because they're so far out of my comfort zone. I also wondered whether the book was intended for people who hadn't used patterns before, but figured it didn't matter too much as I'm still firmly in the beginner category anyway.
On a totally separate train of thought, I bought some pink needlecord from Minerva crafts a couple of months back, planning to copy a tulip-shape cargo skirt I already own, but in a brighter colour.
Since then I've had quite a few health problems - nothing life-threatening but it's stopped me from doing the majority of things that fill most of my days (work, sport, and it's sapped a fair bit of the joy out of eating and drinking, too). I've found that when I'm dressing in the morning I care a lot less about what other people think of it, and more about picking something bright, or just interesting. This is somewhat problematic as, while my wardrobe is a lot more interesting than the pile of jeans and sensible black tops I owned in my early twenties, and my activewear is now what I'd call pretty "out there", my day to day wardrobe is still pretty muted. Aside from a single red skirt (that I love, but that doesn't fit at the moment), my bottoms are all blue and black, and while I own a lot of patterned tops, they're mostly grey and navy.
Thanks to the afore-mentioned health problems, I found myself sitting up in bed reading No Patterns Needed until about 4am one night, and got all excited about making a really full skirt with my pink cord. I also taught myself how to make some little origami bookmarks to mark the pages, as well as starting little sewing planning book... Sometimes - particularly when you don't have to be up in the morning - it's best to just make the most of the energy you have whenever it comes.
The next day after a brief, fruitless search for a cheap roll of plain paper, I bought the biggest broadsheet I could find to draft the "spot pocket" skirt. I'm pretty much totally out of the loop media-wise at the moment as it's quite painful to read - though I appreciate that's the case for a lot of perfectly healthy people at the moment, too. On the one hand I wish I'd picked out a better page for my lovely skirt, but on the other hand I don't think I could have put the paper to better use.
Following Rosie's instructions is pretty eye-opening, and I've had a few epiphanies while making this skirt. I already know through my day job, and life in general, that I don't like blindly following instructions without understanding what I'm actually doing, but I realised how strongly this applied to sewing, too. Here are some of the steps I go through when I'm making up a garment from a pattern.
1) Measure myself
2) Increase my measurements arbitrarily due to fear of making something too small
3) Consult pattern and realise my "measurements" fall across three different sizes
4) Look at the "finished garment" measurements and wonder what to do with this information
5) Consider how the garment looks on other people and wonder whether it's the right length, shape, and/or fit for me
6) Draw on the pattern pieces, drafting between a bunch of sizes
7) Continue to have no comprehension regarding whether these alterations will have any impact on the structural integrity of the garment
All this goes through my head before I've cut any fabric, and it stresses me out. Nothing I've made so far fits me all that well, which makes me wonder why I'm spending so much time on things like darts and pleats. [I'm hopefully going to be making a dress form over the next few weeks that should help with a lot of my fitting problems, but that's a whole other story.]
Rosie's instructions start with measuring my waist, and deciding how long I want my skirt to be, and this turns out to be considerably less traumatic. I'm already reassured that my skirt will fit me on the waist, and it'll be the length I want it to be. Just seeing "÷ 3.14" makes me feel warm inside, and I wonder if I'll be meeting Pythagoras or SohCahToa when I get to the Triangle chapters. We are doing some maths and I understand why we are doing it and I'm dreaming of ways that I might be able to use my brain to make clothes.
After a not inconsiderable amount of soul-searching ("how did I ever let myself become a 31 year old not in possession of a set square?", "how come printed PDFs take up so much damn space when I could literally fit these bits of newspaper in my mouth?", "I don't need to use someone else's template for a pocket bag, I can bloody well DRAW ONE MYSELF", "I like scissors"), I have: three pieces of pretty pink cord that will soon be a skirt; no zip; some newspaper pockets, and minor reservations about cutting the circular pockets out of the front of the skirt. I reluctantly put the pieces away for the evening and realise that I've been having an awful lot of fun, especially in comparison to my usual cutting process. I feel like I had been working with a load of black boxes that I'd never fully understand, but now we're going back to first principles, and some day I'm going to be able to design and make something proper, from the ground up, with maths and imagination and a set square and π.
After some standard invisible zip faffing and a rookie mistake of using overly narrow binding on the waist, having it fray, and then needing to wait until I could buy some wider binding, I eventually finished off the waist.
The final hurdle was the hem, which was really long and which I had to sew 4 times - stay, zigzag, zigzag with a bobbin that actually had thread on it, and the actual hemming. And here is the finished skirt! Pictured with some wool I picked up today along with the binding, and a sneak peek of my next post.
I really like the pattern (though I don't know if I'm allowed to call it a pattern given the book title?), and I had a lot of fun with it, particularly the drafting. I paid a lot more attention to detail on this than other clothes I've made - I only tried using bias binding for the first time a few days ago, and I'm pleased with how the waist turned out. In spite of being super pleased with myself for drafting my own pocket bags, they came up so shallow that they'll never be used, which is a shame. I also wish I'd been more bold with the pockets and cut them further into the skirt, or even used a contrasting fabric. I got some good practise in on this make, and it fits exactly how I wanted it to, which is a first!
Unfortunately, I'm not sure how much I'll actually wear it. I've tried it on with a few things, and the shape doesn't really go with the kind of tops I usually wear. While I do wear some clothes that are narrow around the waist, I normally have a top that covers down to my hips. Tucking into this looks quite weird, but it loses some of its shape when I wear something over it. With all the time I've had on my hands, I have done a konmari on the rest of my clothes, and loads of garments I'd been neglecting have suddenly made it into my rotation, just because I see them every day. So, this skirt will be added to the drawer, and hopefully I'll think of something to do with it soon!
xx
