✂️Sewing Blog What that skirt tells me...

What that skirt tells me...

05/20/2022


This skirt is a good example of how it doesn't matter what size a garment is, clothes don't come shaped like humans.

This skirt was a pretty short mini skirt, but the shape of the side seams was totally unrealistic for the size person it was designed for. Here you can see that we've drawn purple lines where the new stitch line should be, so that the side seams are actually shaped like hips. 

Plaid patchwork skirt, you can see the old stitch line where the zipper was inserted at then a new line is drawn in with a purple sewing marker.

Then, we pinned the zipper into the new location. the edges of the zipper are bound with the red fabric so this was just a matter of stitching the zipper on the purple lines we had decided on by pinning the skirt to the correct shape on the customer.

zipper is pinned to a skirt and is under the sewing machine, ready to sew.

Here the zipper is pinned the the opposite side of the skirt, on the new stitch line.

zipper is pinned to the skirt and is under the sewing machine to be stitched The edge of the fabric was stitched with serging to bind the edges from fraying and we had to replace that stitching next to the zipper on the actual skirt fabric. It might have been easier if I had done the serging first, but hindsight is 20/20.

skirt is under a serger sewing machine to put stitching on the edge of the fabric to keep it from fraying 

Once the zipper was in place, I sewed the rest of the side seam from the zipper down to the hem of the skirt.

Special zipper foot is attached to the sewing machine to stitch the side seam from the zipper down

Once that was complete, I finished the facing around the waistband to enclose the top of the zipper.

skirt is under the sewing machine to show stitching the waistband

Here the facing is being sewn directly to the side of the zipper to enclose all the seam allowance from stitching the zipper to a new location.

skirt is under the sewing machine, stitching closed the zipper area after alteration.

Here is the outside of the skirt with one facing finished off and one facing left to do.

outside of the skirt. it has been finished around the right side of the zipper, and the left side is waiting to be done.

Same status of the skirt, but the inside view.

inside view of the skirt. it has been finished around the left side of the zipper, and the right side is waiting to be done.Finished skirt with the new shape.

Completed skirt laying on the ironing board with a pressing tool laying near it.

It doesn't matter the size of person, garments aren't often shaped correctly.  There is no weight gain or loss that could have made this work for this client. My hope is that more folks come to understand this fact and learn to treat their bodies with more kindness.

Happy Stitching!

Kristen's handwritten signature, with a heart.


Topic in this post: #AlterCasual

Kristen sews because clothes don't come shaped like humans and people often think their bodies are the problem, which is a problem.

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