In case you missed it, after last month’s footstool, I put up a poll on Instagram for you guys to pick my creative challenge for May. Clothes for my lower half won! I’ve decided to try a skirt.
I was intentionally vague on the poll as if my primary idea goes wrong, I have an even easier backup (a half apron/tool belt) that will still meet the brief.
You’ll be able to find all of this month’s posts here.
Why a Skirt?
A skirt is a relatively easy sewing project that many people start with on their me made clothing journey. I thought it’d be a good first attempt for sewing inner tube clothes, as I can take a simple sewing pattern and make adjustments to it to fit the needs of inner tube.
I’m going to go with a mini as I often wear them with leggings anyway. Assuming it works, the skirt may make it into a semi-regular rotation. If it doesn’t, it’ll use fewer inner tubes than longer skirt.
I’ve made several skirts before, and they all tend to be upcycles. Here’s one I made from a pair of trousers a few years ago:
Limitations
Sewing inner tube isn’t like working with normal fabrics. While I start with strips, the centre of each strip is longer than the sides. So if I were to create a huge sheet and cut out from it, that fullness would distort the pattern pieces, and I’d have to repeatedly keep cutting, creating a lot of little scrappy waste.
Some other thoughts:
- Whenever possible I want to create pattern pieces as close as possible to the pieces of inner tube I’ll be using.
- Inner tube is rather bulky, so I won’t be creating a drawstring or elasticated waist garment. It’ll need to be relatively fitted with some stretch and ease provided from the inner tube itself.
- That bulkiness also means it doesn’t like to fold neatly – so it won’t be the normal sew the right sides together process of sewing. Instead, I’ll be overlapping strips to construct the pieces and seams.
- I’ll also need to add a waist stay out of a stable material – that’s a reinforcing piece to prevent fabrics from stretching out. This will help keep some pressure off at the waist, and will hopefully protect my stitching lines.
Plan
My idea is to make a few test skirts out of regular fabric to have a pattern that fits me well. I’ve got a few patterns in my collection that I want to start with:
I really love Peppermint Magazine – they regularly release new patterns as part of their sewing school at low cost (they recommend a donation). They’re a great place to experiment with different styles of garments if you’re just starting out
Both of these would just need to be cropped and maybe minor alterations to the location of darts, but they’re something I’d wear anyway so I’m excited to give them a go. To be honest, I only have one or two minis that fit after some recent weight loss, so it would be good to make some!
Hopefully they’re something I can translate into inner tubes easily.
If these don’t work with tubes, I’ve also considered a gored skirt. Gored skirts are made out of identical panels. The benefit to this is they’re all symmetrical, so it could be easier to construct. BUT:
- it would also cause a lot of skinny strips of waste, which I wouldn’t be able to easily use on other projects.
- it’s also more suited to flared skirts, which would be less suited to a mini, and not necessarily work with the level of bulk I’ll have because I’m using inner tubes.
Still, I’ll keep this idea on the back burner though if my initial plan doesn’t work.
Next week I should have some fabric test garments to show you, I’ve even got some fun secondhand fabric to use on the project!