Project: GODET

Having finished the Boy’s jeans, I simply had to dive into yet another attempt at making a garment on Sunday to wear on Monday. This time, I’ve had a vision of black skirt with pink godets in many seam openings.

I traced the pencil skirt pattern that I made for the disastrous blouse-dress/pencil skirt project, since I did actually manage to make a decent pattern shape for that skirt. Instead of the darts at front and back I made seams to piece things together. Then I began to lay it out on the remainder of black twill that I used for various & sundry things, because it was quite a nice twill. Except – wah waaaah – with the seaming, there wasn’t room to lay out this pattern on what was left of the twill. Sooooo I dipped into the stash and found a black floral print linen I’ve been harbouring for a year (that is actually a very short period of time for me to stash something). The pink fabric is a piece of (honestly) god-awful polyester that I picked up at a fabric swap almost as a joke. Turns out the pink matches the flowers in my linen print perfectly and the weight of the fabrics is a good match.

After putting together the seamed pieces for front and back and inserting another quite-decent invisible zipper with my new invisible zipper foot, I realized that I’d made one extra panel for the front and it was quite a bit too big. So I took out the side front panels and stitched it together, leaving the bottom 8″ open for the godets. I have finished the seams with black serging because this is linen and it will fray like nobody’s business.

I’ve inserted two godets now. The first was a bit of a nightmare but blessedly the linen print hides plenty of sins, and the second was a bit better.

I’m just taking a break for dinner at the moment and then I’m hoping to finish the godets and put in a lining. I’m really tempted to line the skirt with the pink polyester because I’m pretty sure I have no black lining at the moment.

Oh you want pictures?

Update – All it needs is hem!

The rest of the godets went in pretty smoothly (literally) using a serger so everything is tidy and finished. The lining was quickly drafted by taping together the pieces from the skirt and laying it on the pink fabric. The trick is going to be what kind of hem to use, because the linen will like a simple finish-and turn but the godet fabric is lighter and possible needs a rolled hem which gives me a headache just thinking of it. And I want to hem it before going to work tomorrow…so doing one treatment all the way around would probably be preferred.

So it might not make it to work tomorrow. Better plan for something else!

Hem This:

I’m pretty satisfied by how the print florals lined up after sewing the pieces together. Essentially the seams took about 2cm out of the pattern at each seam but it still looks okay.

By the way, the waistband uses one of my favourite garment-sewing tricks… grosgrain ribbon between the layers! I tend to stock up on neutral colour grosgrain (or petersham as it’s called in wider form) whenever I find it on sale, and in this case I’m glad I did because this looks best without a waistband but it needed some firm hold at the waist, without interfacing.