Join me in my adventures as I write romance novels and sew vintage and contemporary fashion.

Saturday, August 30, 2014

McCalls 7677: The 80s Called...

Once upon a time, about half a year ago, I sorted my patterns from the 1980s. While doing so, I found this cute sarong skirt
pattern that simply cried out to be made instead of being returned to the plastic storage bin of no return (unless the 80s come back.)

I bought a piece of reddish-orange and white challis in a sarong-worthy print and set to work.

I adore rayon challis.I love wearing it and a sick part of me loves sewing it. It presses so nicely, but it does tend to stretch and go its own way, so I decided to underline the fabric with cotton batiste.

The batiste didn't stretch, but the challis did--over an inch in some areas.
After trimming the challis to match the batiste, I used transfer paper with disappearing ink to draw the darts and pleat markings on the underlining. Usually I just mark them with snips and pins, but this stuff was cool, so I used it.
Also, even though I love making pleats, the pleats on this pattern are difficult to follow using only snips and pins, so I'm glad I drew them.
You can just see the purple marks on the orange fabric.
They honestly did disappear.
The pattern makes the pleat look easy, but trust me, you have to focus while you're making these pleats.




After the pleats were done, it was clear sailing--or it would have been if the pattern directions had been correct. The illustration shows the tie attached to the right side of the skirt back. If you do that, then there is nothing to tie the other tie to once the skirt is wrapped. 
I put the tie on the left side of the skirt back and viola--I had something to tie to. At the last minute I decided to only underline the skirt back and left front. I thought underlining both front layers would make the skirt too bulky.
And here's the skirt in action:



2 comments:

  1. Now that is an 80's pattern that should stay around. :)

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  2. I agree, JB. I'm pretty sure that skirt was the reason I bought the pattern in the first place. I do love a good sarong. :)

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