Welcome to Part 2 of my creation of my Sophie cosplay from Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Let’s talk about the skirt. I’ll admit there’s not a lot to talk about because this was another case of having the perfect pattern and perfect fabric.
Let’s start with the fabric. I ordered several swatches from Fabric Wholesale Direct, which is one of my favorite online fabric stores. I had thought a twill might be good for the skirt, but this Ponte de Roma had such a beautiful color and drape, so that’s what I ended up going with. Even better, it’s stretchy, which makes for a better fit when you have such a wild size disparity between your hips and waist like I do.
The pattern I used was McCalls 8510, which is a basic circle skirt type pattern with a zipper. But because I was using a stretchy fabric, I decided I wouldn’t do a zipper. So yay! I didn’t do a mock-up of the skirt because the pattern would be so easy to tailor…and it was. I cut everything out, sewed everything together, and then adjusted the seams around the waist to make it a little tighter. SO easy. I also made the skirt shorter than the pattern called for, since Sophie’s is knee-length.
Raw skirt
For the waist band, I used the waist band for the pattern, but made it extra long so I could do the little overlap in the front with the buttons. However, before I added it to the skirt, I did the top-stitching. I tested a few stitches to see what would work best on the stretch fabric (a regular stitch wouldn’t cut it), and it turned out the stretch stitch on my machine was the perfect one. So I did the top-stitching, attached the waist band (leaving room for the overlap), and then added hooks to the overlap to hold it in place. I sewed on buttons, and that was that!
For the hem, I folded the skirt up around 1/2″ and then sewed that in place, and then folded it up another 1/2″ to get a double folded hem. I gathered the fabric in places on the back so that the hem wouldn’t be over-stretched and land weirdly (I wish I could describe this better).
But here’s the best part. I used silver ribbon for the trim. I used a regular glue stick (you know the purple glue?) along the back of the ribbon, and then attached it over the seam line at the bottom of the skirt and ironed it down. This is a little trick I learned from a quilting site. It will hold ribbon (or whatever you’re attaching) in place while you sew it without the use of pins. This comes in handy when you’re working with fabric that pins just aren’t going to hold well or when working with stretch or slippery fabrics.
Anyway, here’s the finished skirt.
Finished skirt