Quart into pint-pot fail

[nineveh_uk]

I have a skirt pattern than requires 1.6m of 45" fabric. I have 1m of 1.36m Liberty Tana lawn with a one-way print. I have spent the evening cutting out duplicate pattern pieces and arranging them in every single possible way. I could do it with 1.1m by cutting the single back skirt into two, and doing the facing in a different fabric, which I would do anyway because a self yoke wouldn't work with the print. Unfortunately I don't that 10cm. Without it I think that I can do it with 1m by cutting the single back skirt into two, doing some natty little extra pieces on the front, and splitting the back yoke. That does not sound the quick and easy alternative to the top I originally intended to make, and there is a lot more potential for it to go wrong.

Alternatively, I could remember that Shaukat exists, and happily they aren't sold out. On the downside, this does turn what was a cheap top to a skirt costing twice as much. I shall decide in the morning.

Comments

[antisoppist]

You need to provide the skirt pattern if you want an informed response on the geometry. How tight-fitting/floaty is it? Could you lose any on the side seams? Lose any on the length? Shorter skirt with a border at the bottom in a different fabric?

It's only the trees that make it one-way (They are very good trees). I was wondering if you could have them upside down on an inconspicuous bit of the skirt but it doesn't sound like there is an inconspicuous bit of the skirt and it depends whether you would feel obliged to go around like Harriet Vane saying "yes but the trees are upside down on the centre back panel" every time anyone complimented you on it because that would get tedious.

[nineveh_uk]

It is McCalls 4783. I suppose that you could do it with the main skirt in quarters alternating right way and upside down to look deliberate, but I like the trees (and hills/sky landscape, which is more visible when you've got a larger piece) the right way up! I've taken all I can off the side-seams. I could do a border at the bottom in a different fabric, but I think it would also need to be Tana lawn to work, so then I'd still be having to order it from the internet. I like the existing length (I've used the pattern before) and don't really want it shorter, but possibly it would be possible to take an inch off the top of the skirt and then add it back in a shaped band made of multiple pieces. It's just that it all starts to become a lot harder work and this was supposed to be quick and easy.

It would make a straight skirt, because I've got a pattern that I've done that before with from a metre, but I want a floaty skirt, damn it! Of course, this is entirely my fault for buying a 1m remnant in the first place and then deciding to do something impractical with it.

[antisoppist]

Yes, if you'd have to order new fabric anyway, you might as well get the right one instead! And if you wanted a patchwork project, you'd be making a quilt in the first place not a theoretically easy skirt.

Are you definitely against using it as a top now?

I am supposed to be translating information about fishing for tourists in Lapland, not gazing at Liberty fabric...

[nineveh_uk]

I worry that I would resent the top for not being a skirt... I have another top pattern I could look at to see if it fit, but that too might be patchwork, and would also be more complicated. The agony of choice! I should never have had the skirt idea.

Liberty fabric is great to look at. I am tempted by the one that is Icelandic icebergs.

[el_staplador]

It's a gorgeous print, but I have no helpful suggestions as to how to address the problem of there not being enough of it.

Do the back in a coordinating fabric

[(Anonymous)]

One solution to the not enough fabric that I haven't seen mentioned: Do the back of the skirt in a plain color fabric that goes with the print - a shade of grey or taupe perhaps. I see plenty of clothes with patterns only on the front that this should look intended
-M