Two Buck Skirt

from sarah the sewist

Saturday morning I finished (after having started Friday night) what I call my "Organic Yoga Skirt," but what Josh calls "Two-Buck (Not Chuck) Skirt." Which is, of course, way funnier than anything I could name an article of clothing.

The fabric is from our Sport Fabric Haul at Rose City Textiles, the smoky blue organic cotton knit that's identical to my favorite JJill sweatshirt. It only took about a yard and a quarter to make this skirt---so I'm thinking I'm going to have a lot of smoky blue in my wardrobe. We have a lot of this stuff. I whipped up #126 from the July 2007 issue of Burda World of Fashion. Apparently, the German gal in the magazine was having the same problem with her skirt that I was, as her skirt is bunching in the same weird manner as mine. It looks great, though, and I think that the bunching has more to do with the way she and I are both standing than any design or sewing flaw. The wrinkles are not a design element.


This being Burda World of Fashion, I had to trace the pattern off of the magazine insert. I read somewhere a great tip for doing tis using wax paper, and it really worked great. All of the intersecting lines and jumbled up pattern markings were much clearer when I taped normal kitchen wax paper to the pattern sheet and taped the whole thing to our living room window. If you need more width, you can fuse the paper together with an iron. In a weird way, tracing the pattern was kind of the most fun part of the whole project. That and using the twin needle. That was awesome.

Edited to add: I've had a couple questions about what the process is in tracing the pattern. Here are the steps:

1. Supplies needed: Roll of wax paper, blue painter's tape, sharpie.
   
2. Take your Burda sheet and iron it like a normal pattern.
3. Tape it to your window, so to create a natural light box for tracing. I have a really big living room window, so that makes it pretty easy.
4. Fuse together enough lengths of wax paper to cover each of the pattern pieces you're using from the magazine. (You can fuse the wax paper by putting your iron on the low setting and gently tapping it on the wax paper. A smart person would place a dish towel or something between the iron and the wax paper. I like to live on the edge, so I don't.)
5. Tape the wax paper to the Burda pattern sheet.
6. Trace the lines of the pattern onto the wax paper using the sharpie. It would probably make your life easier if you used a sharpie in the same color as the pattern lines. I think I'll do that next time.
   
7. Don't forget to trace dart lines, and other markings, too.
   
8. Don't forget to add your seam and hem allowances. Burda gives suggestions for both in their pattern "instructions.
9. Untape everything from the wall and cut your pattern out.
   

This is a pretty simple, easy and cheap way to get your Burda patterns traced; I'm trying to be a disciplined sewist and do this for all my patterns. We'll see how that goes.