We have all experienced personal tragedy in our lives. Moments that throw our world upside down and off track, where we are just scrambling to find a foothold. And the weirdest thing that happens, is lifting my head from the weight of personal sorrow to find the world kept turning. I’m surprised every time. To see it didn’t pause for my grief, or wait for me to get back in my feet. It continued to spin as if this huge, tragic thing never happened.
Perhaps the most unifying thing about our current crisis is the way the world has slipped out of orbit for us all. This time, I glance up from my personal struggles through this pandemic to find that, instead of continuing to turn as normal, the entire planet has come to a screeching halt. As I’m sure it true for most of us, the world feels as if it has stopped. Spinning in place, but not getting anywhere. I have never felt so connected to the people I am so isolated from, bound to friends and strangers alike by this shared tragedy. And the difficulty, in some strange way, dissipates in being shared by many. In seeing the community bind together. In seeing the outpouring of love and support around the globe. In knowing we are in this together.
In times of crisis, I think we all turn to our comfort zones. Some are on FaceTime with friends every day. Others are throwing themselves into work. Or trying to figure out how to entertain and home school their kids. We have the things we need to do. And then we have the things that keep us sane when the difficulties of these tasks get to be too much.
For me, that place where I regain my sanity is in sewing. To find a moment of quiet in my chaotic brain, and put needle and thread to work to create beauty in a world that feels so terrifying right now. To pause and focus instead of clicking on yet another news article. Awhile back, I acquired this most amazing trompe l’oeil bow print fabric from Sew La Vie Fabrics. I love literally everything about it – the vibrant color, the trompe l’oeil print, the ombre effect of size and shade of the bows. It sat in my sewing room waiting for me to have a moment. So I decided to take a moment…
From Fabric to Fabulous
There were a lot of vintage circle skirts sold as kits back in the day – either as panels or half circles that the home sewist would put together in 1950’s splendor. This skirt came in two panels of purple trompe l’ceil fabric, arranged with an ombre effect of larger, darker purple bows at the bottom edge and gradating into smaller, lighter purple bows closer to the waist.
I started by pressing the fabric out and laying it on the floor in my foyer to try to get a sense of where to start. It turned out the panels were slightly off from one another – lining up the edges would mean the print would be off center. It was time to get my pattern matching game face on!
Starting at one edge of one panel, I carefully aligned the print on the right side, folding down the outer edge. I did this all along the selvage, pressing down the seam allowance with my fingers (not as good as hot pressing, but will make a crease that can hold it in place for a bit). Once I was happy with the pattern matching, I pinned the two fabric panels together, checking everything was aligned.
I‘ve shared some pattern matching tips before in this post, but one trick I’ve used in the past is a slip basting technique, where you can hand stitch the fabric together from the right side to confirm it will stay matched when you machine sew it.
To do this, you anchor the thread in the top layer and, working left to right, pulled the needle out through the folded edge. Then, pick up a small stitch on the fabric on the right, and bring the needle up through the folded edge again, about 1/4″ above the caught stitch. Continued this along the panel, forming a perfect ladder. Then, when you put right sides together, you can sew up along your “ladder.”
Original Post: The Counterdanse
Original Post: The Counterdanse
Original Post: The Counterdanse
Then, I had to cut a hole for the waist and cut to my desired length. I’ve made many circle skirts in my day, so I thought this would be pretty straightforward. It turned out, however, that the print was not symmetrically long all the way around the skirt. So, I measured the length at the longest point that would keep the integrity of the design and cut to that length. PSA: Always double and triple check measurements before taking scissors to anything!
Next, I cut the inner circumference. For this, you take your desired waist measurement (28″) and plug it into the handy equation for the circumference of a circle (2*pi*r). So, I cut out the inner circle using a 4.5″ radius. I finished with a JLC style waistband, with 6″ rows of parallel stitching, and blind stitched a 1″ hem. Suddenly, I had the trompe l’oeil circle skirt of dreams!
Girl. n:
Attitude with a bow.
Right now, I think we all need to give ourselves permission to de-stress as we see fit. As important as it is to try to maintain normalcy in a situation like this, this is FAR from normal and we are all going to cope in different ways. This might mean a daily walk, learning a new skill, dusting off an old one – there is no right way to get through this (except for staying in).
Now more than ever, I am so grateful for our online community – for the people running free online yoga classes, sharing their daily outfits on instagram, making sewing tutorials, or cooking how-to’s on YouTube. It’s so important to band together and continue to celebrate the things that bring us joy. I know I feel stressed up to my eyeballs on the regular, frantically trying to adjust to this new normal and skidding with every step. But, it helps to look around to see people similarly slipping and spinning to my left and to my right.
Because if we hold on to each other, we will never fall.
xoxo
Outfit Details:
Top: Vivian of Holloway
Skirt: made by me; fabric from Sew La Vie Fabrics (similar modern & vintage here, here, & here)
Brooch: gift, no longer available (similar)
Bracelet: gift, Swarovski
Handbag: Kate Spade in mint
Shoes: Irregular Choice (similar here & here)
Lip Color: Dior Rouge 634
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Any items marked with a “c/o” (courtesy of) a retailer mean I was provided with an item for free in exchange for a review and/or feature on my blog. I always provide my honest opinion of any item I’m reviewing, regardless of whether it was sent to me as a courtesy item or if I purchased it myself. In addition, this post may contain affiliate links. This means that if you click and/or make a purchase through certain links or ads on this site, I may make a commission from that click and/or purchase at no cost to you, which helps with the day-to-day running costs of my blog.