The crazy Bernadette Frankenskirt: a dreamy success story!

 This plan started as all bad ideas start: on night shift 

I wanted a skirt from a fancy dress shop but it was >500$ and really...just a linen skirt...and I don't even wear skirts that much.  But the skirt had a kind of magical shape and really cool hidden pockets.  The dreamy exciting thing about this skirt was a huge front pleat that pleated forward over itself (one side over the other) in a way that when you kick your knee forward, the pleats open, but when you stand upright, they hide.  The pockets are brought around towards the front and hide just under the fold of the pleat.  I thought if I could find a skirt with front pleats, I could probably recreate it.  

I deleted most of the photos of this skirt (I had MANY) and am left with the following: 

 

I thus went on the hunt for a skirt with front pleats.  I reviewed a few options but the Bernadette stood out.  

As you do on night shift, I bought it immediately and sent it to the printer so it would be ready in the morning.  

The feature I needed: big front pleats that I could shift around.  The challenges were many: 

-Bernadette has a back zip, my dream skirt has back elastic and a flat front

-my pattern has pockets hidden under the fancy front pleat. 

So the big question is: how much fabric do I add to the back skirt to change it from a zip to an elastic waist thing?  Subsidiary questions: how far around does the elastic back come/how wide is the front flat panel? And how wide are my pleats?  How far over each other do they cross? 

To create version 1 I used a piece of pale sage green linen which was my only unallocated bit of stash suitable for a skirt.  I measured my hips and made the skirt back wide enough to get over them with the elastic fully stretched.  I made a vertical line at the lateral edge of the pleats, and created a seam there. I added pockets into this seam.  I used the Bardon dress pockets as they are the best pockets of all time.  I used the excessive number of photos on my phone of the original skirt to recreate the direction of the pleats since I was pleating them towards the midline and over each other.  

Voila version 1!  It actually looks legitimately like the original!  Wahoo!  Oh but we are NOT there yet.  Some pitfalls: it really just barely gets over my hips.  I think the fabric could only tolerate me putting it on 3 times before it threatened to burst.  There is not enough gathering in the back.  And my pockets are not tucked into the pleats deeply enough, they need to be at the spot where the pleat creates a fold.  It was time to revisit the inspiration.  I went back to the shop with my booty and spent too long in a dressing room with the two skirts and a measuring tape.  This is a fancy dress shop and the attendant was a young man who thought I was too shabby looking so I'm sure he was pretty suspicious of what I was doing in there.

I identified that I actually needed something like 20 cm more across the back, wow!  I also needed to bring the elastic waistband all the way to the front pleats rather than ending it at the side seam.  I measured the front piece to get the right width, which also increased the size of my pleat components and moved the pockets out a bit from the midline. 

Scavenged through my stash which is mostly allocated mentally to other projects, or not bottomweight...I fell upon this amazing kind of textured viscose from Fabric Godmother, it's beautiful and was at risk of being deep stashed as just too pretty to cut.  BUT I knew this skirt would fit and the first was wearable so I KNEW it would be wearable and was willing to take the leap.  

 I leapt!  (leaped?)  

 

I am so happy with the results.  My knitting club reckons my skirt is better than the original.  Possibly true, I think my pockets are slightly further out which feels more normal.  It's definitely amazing enough that I couldn't justify buying the original anyway, and luckily for my resistance, the skirt sold and is gone.  I'm not making another one of these in a hurry but my skirtmaking flurry is nearly at an end after reaching a lifetime high.  As a side note, my green practice version was snapped up by a petite Malaysian work colleague who LOVES it!  

Friday pattern Co Saguaro set and a long, subsequent elastic pants comparison binge sew

 I made this set in a time crunchy state of urgency just before leaving on a trip (and I wanted to wear the set on the trip obv).  For this reason I had everything on my floor: the lovely red fabric I thought I would use plus about 7 alternative fabrics in a mix-and-match free for all to come up with enough yardage for these *hungry* pants.  The issues were that I wanted the set to still be a set, so I wanted the top and bottom to go together.  Considered 3 colours of raw silk in a jester-style mix and match but decided it would be too comical for me.  There was a lovely flowered linen for the bottoms, but didn't have anything that would be a good top, and I think the red fabric I had initially planned was not enough enough to make the pants.  

Lesson: really high waisted, wide hem pants take a LOT of fabric.  I can't fit them on 1 meter of 110 wide!!  Rare!!!

It was with a weird shock that I pulled out the super amazing high quality linen from Tessuti that I have been stashing.  I love it so much that I bought more than a meter.  I didn't have enough to make the entire set, but the white raw silk was a close enough match to be the top.  

Onward!  Size S and no modifications because I didn't have time.  I was accepting the potential for a HUGE DISASTROUS fail with one of my most coveted recent fabric purchases (to be considered distinct from the so precious deep stash I am just unable to cut into), and just flying with it. 

I did make the tactical decision on the top to go with a tighter elastic that grips my chest, rather than a loose elastic which skims without sticking.  I reckoned this way I could go without a bra.  However, in reality I hate the clinging feel - the loose elastic would have been a better choice.  So the top is kind of uncomfortable for me to wear, though I think it looks pretty cool.  I overlapped the tops quite a bit, trying on as I went, to get the amount of coverage I was content with.  This way even when I lean forward there's a bit of coverage.  

The result is that the pants are amazing.  I think it's the linen that does it - this linen just wanted to be a pair of swishy pants, and the length of them suits it perfectly.  High waisted loose pants have been the thing this summer, with cropped tops, and I actually have a few cropped tops that have gone really nicely with these, so they turned into an absolute win.  The crotch is too low and the pockets are annoyingly small, but despite that I adore these pants. 

This is with a Victory Frances tee hacked out of a very old tshirt - but my most judgy eye felt that the armscye fit is horrible (the pattern offers a back tie as a cheat so it won't keep falling off your shoulders) so I didn't do any more variations of this.  In fact I never kept the original ones I made for similar reasons.  Maybe I'll get more inspired this summer, it could be as simple as adding in the very necessary sloping shoulders adjustment that I know I need but rarely do.
 

I don't think I'll wear the top due to the tight elastic.  I think it's quite cute though and before giving it away I will probably take some notes in case I want to make it again as a stand-alone piece.  Sadly with my crazy travel schedule I thought I'd taken photos but I didn't (or I threw them away.)  No photos of the top.  But it was cute.

In the meantime I thought it would be fun to make the adjustments I should have made the first time around.  I was near The Fabric Store so I could even buy fabric for the experiment.  I wasn't sure whether these stripes would yell "clown pants" or be great. No way to know but to try, right?  I shortened the rise by 1", increased the size of the pockets by 1" all the way around, and changed the hem to an Anna Allen style 2+1 inch foldover (1 inch, then 2 inches) lengthened the hems to make up for that (maybe not necessary, they are longer).

All my thinking about these pants and modifications of them and some future shorts vision all got conflated together into a great big elastic pants binge, which follows: 

I moved onto the Peppermint Samford Pants 

Great pattern info, says it's for a 5'8" human. 

shortened crotch 1", and length 2", made size C 

Adjusted back pockets so I didn't need to double them- I thought the instructions were a bit silly. 

 

These are functionally identical to the Saguaro pants - a wide leg pant with a self made waist tie and 2" elastic.  Seriously SO similar.  However, these are FULL length and again, I had very few fabric options here.  I spied some drapey rayon that I bought recently and had completely forgotten about.  Not sure what the vision was for the rayon, but I bought 2m.  These pants feel like they run the show, but they also feel like something I might cheerfully wear to swan about the house.  I had some thoughts about whether to stabilise the pockets with interfacing.  Should one always stabilise pockets?  I don't remember what I ended up doing. 

Learning to shorten the rise on all these high waisted things has been a game changer.  So much that I'm considering going back to the Florence pants .

Anyway then I made the Peppermint Loungewear set pants.  (Incidentally the fit looks so similar to my old pictures of those Florence pants, but it isn't - the rise on those was terrible for me.)

These pants do NOT tell you what height human they are made for. 

I made size B and shortened the pants 1" but left the crotch height alone. 

It was really interesting to compare patterns which appear superficially quite similar - in terms of fit, of course, but also in terms of the information provided in the patterns ahead of time.  It seems like a mark of the quality of the pattern designer to share as much relevant info as possible.  Lately there are so many people designing patterns and selling them on etsy, and there is no longer a good, clear repository of new patterns and people's opinions on them - so it's hard to know whether to try out a new designer when you spy a cool new pattern. 

 

Sorry these are a bit rubbish, it was too cold for this.

Anyway these pants used a bit less fabric, so I could fit them on 1.5m of delightful drapey viscose twill, possibly from Blackbird fabrics.  Also, this pattern is SUPER easy, because there's no waistband. You just attach the elastic to the top of the fabric and fold down.  It's nice, for once, to have an elastic that won't be able to roll up or be obnoxious, although it was a bit tricky to sew down as you have to make sure not to fold over the pocket edges.  These pants have a much different shape to the previous selection - bigger pockets, cropped styling.  Way too cold for these now, they are going straight away for spring, but they are a surprise winner - I really love them! 

None of these pants are suitable for the shorts I have been dreaming about but luckily it's winter now so I can save that for next summer.