Preposterous Skirt

Back in the day (as Noah would say), I had a pair of preposterous trousers. Extremely long, far too big for me, the widest flares you could imagine and in a set of - how shall I put it - quite noticeable colours.

They were my preposterous trousers, and I loved them. You too may have known and loved them, if you were part of my university life.

You can behold their glory in this (rather odd) photo:

Much though I loved my preposterous trousers, I didn't wear them nearly often enough. This was due in part to the excessively large waistband, which increased the ease of slipping out of the trousers to rather a dangerous degree; and in part to the excessive length and width of the legs, which soaked up water as far as the knee if I went out in the rain and soon became a ragged mess of muddy fabric at the hem. They spent a couple of years in my so-called mending pile* before making their way out into the garage.

Along came Greenbelt, John-Paul Flintoff, a £30 sewing machine from ebay and a book called Design-It-Yourself Clothes with a simple-looking section on skirts.

A few evenings of greaseproof paper, careful snipping, somewhat cavalier pinning and a steep learning curve on the buttonholes later, and... ta-daa!

My new skirt. Lovely. All it lacks is pockets. (And some better lighting for the photo, maybe?)

(Also a button came off the other day. What is the good and proper way to sew on buttons?)

*As a child I had a t-shirt I loved which got a hole in it. My dear mother told me to put it in the mending pile. Quoth I, "Oh no, I don't want to do that. I'd really like to see this t-shirt again one day." My own mending pile, alas, is something of the same ilk.