Dragon Skirt

If you live in Hamilton and like to sew*, then you should discover Dave’s Emporium on Hood St (if you’re in Wellington it’s called Pete’s Emporium in Porirua).  I’ve told Andrew “if I ever go missing and you can’t find me, try looking at the wall of buttons, i’ll probably be there!”  I have a thing for collecting buttons… not that I use them for all that much, but its come in handy occasionally.

Anyway, aside from Dave’s impressive button collection, they also have a decent selection of fabrics – although they appear to be in no particular order, so it pays to have some time up your sleeve to just browse for awhile.  When I went there I was on a mission to find some red and white polka dot fabric (which i’ll be able to tell you more about after Christmas) and along the way we found this gorgeous fabric:

As soon as I saw it I knew it was destined to be a skirt, it was just too perfect.  There’s been alot of nice skirt tutorials around lately – like this one – that i’ve been wanting to try for a while, so with that in mind I hunted down some wide elastic (also from Dave’s – they really have everything!) and set about making a skirt:

Let me just say that this is the second skirt that I made from the same fabric and elastic.  The first one had to be entirely unpicked, since I took my measurements wrong and it was way too big! But lets not talk about that…

For this skirt I cut half a metre of fabric and after hemming the top and sides I pinned each end to a piece of elastic that was a teeny bit smaller than my waist.  I stretched out the elastic and pinned it in another couple of spots along the elastic, and then stretched it out again to sew it on.  When I had my fabric with elastic along the top, I sewed the two ends together with a 1inch allowance. Then I folded out the 1inch elastic and sewed each side back onto itself to make it flat, as well as ironing out the fabric seam so it didn’t stick out.  Here’s what it looks like on:

Pretty impressive, if I do say so myself!  Since I got 1metre of fabric I still have some leftover, so i’d like to try a proper circle skirt next, maybe with alternating panels of plain and dragon fabric.  I think this will get alot of wear over summer 🙂

~Trina ~

*if you don’t like to sew I still suggest you go have a look, they don’t only have fabric, its also a great place to go if you need costumes – they have wigs and hats and all that – and lots of other things, its really like a big $2 shop.

PS – I still need some help deciding on my next knitting project! So far we have two votes for Katrina rib and two votes for Vesper.  Here’s the post so you can offer your suggestion.