1970’s Elsa Skirt

A few months ago, I had plans to go to a pop culture convention with some friends of mine. Since I’m loosing weight, the only “geeky” clothes that fit me was a few t-shirts and my Tardis jumper skirt. I had some time at that time, so I began working on new skirts and costumes I could make and finish in time to wear to the convention.

Unfortunately, the convention plans ended up falling through and in my disappointment, I set everything I sewed to wear to the convention aside. This week, I began to drag all my unfinished projects I worked on for the convention out so I could finish them. One of them was an Elsa skirt using a reprint of a 1970’s skirt pattern.

The fabric I used to make the skirt out of was an Elsa fabric sitting in my fabric pile for a few years.

I found it at Walmart and I love it to pieces, but I never had any reason to use it. I contemplated using it for a few projects over the past few years, but nothing seemed right. This year, I decided it sat around long enough and, even though the fabric is no longer found at my local Walmart, I wanted to use it to make a skirt.

When I decided to go to the convention, I wanted to make skirts using geeky fabric and reprints of vintage patterns to accompany the shirts in my closet and match my Tardis jumper skirt, which was made using a reprint of a 1950’s pattern. Searching my pattern collection for a skirt pattern, I found Simplicity’s pattern number 8019, a reprint of a 1970’s skirt pattern.

I wanted to use this pattern to make a skirt for a while, but I did not have a reason to use it. Since the pattern is easy to make compared to other patterns I was considering, so I believed I could make the whole entire skirt in a few weeks. (I would be right if the plans for the convention did not fall through!) Also, the amount of fabric required for view B was the right amount of fabric I had, so I decided to use it to make the skirt out of.

The front of the skirt has buttons on the front, and while at Walmart I found these adorable Olaf buttons which I though would be perfect for the skirt…

 

Making the skirt and working with the pattern was relatively easy, sans fitting because I’ve found that most Simplicity patterns are too small for my hips. I fixed this by adding additional side panels so it will fit the way I wanted it to. In addition to assisting with the fit of the skirt, the panels served another purpose, but I’ll get to that later in the post. Before I sewed the front of the skirt to the back, the skirt looked like this…

The front…

The Back…

After sewing the side seams, I sewed the waistband on. At the time I made the skirt, I was in a hurry to finish it in time to wear to the convention so used scrap fabric for the waistband. The only fabric I could use that matched the colors of Elsa fabric was polyester satin. Since it was too shinny for me, I flipped the satin and used the back as the right side and and the shinny side as the wrong side.

I know I’ve mentioned this before, but I am loosing weight. Because of this, I’m trying to adapt anything I sew to be weight loss friendly. Even though I made this skirt to be worn at a convention, I wanted to make it weight loss friendly so I could wear it after the convention was over. To make it weight loss friendly, I sewed a piece of elastic to the back of the waistband.

The skirt pattern would not accommodate the elastic in the back of the skirt unless I added new panels to the sides of the skirt. The panels did not effect the way the front of the skirt, just the side.

After I finished sewing the elastic to the waistband, I sewed the Olaf buttons onto the front of the skirt and hemmed the skirt. Then, it was done!

Overall, I’m very pleased with the way the skirt turned out. The only issue I have with it is I did not add pockets to it. I don’t know why I left out the pockets, especially since I wanted to add them, but I think I forgot to add them until it was too late. (That’s why I don’t like to make costumes or clothes in a hurry!) If I do make another skirt the same way, I’ll add pockets to them.

That’s all for now! Thank you for reading!