Finished Tie Dye Picnic Skirt

Hi friends. Here is the finished product from my adventures in tie dye: A Picnic Blanket skirt made using this excellent tutorial from Tilly.

I really enjoyed making this skirt, the tutorial instructions were super clear and easy to follow, and the skirt itself is pretty simple to make, very satisfying for a beginner like me.
I used my tie dyed fabric for the body of the skirt and some more of that cheapy white 'cotton' for the waistband. Originally I wanted to use bright turquoise buttons, but as the grey colour turned out so pale I went with some cute baby blue buttons instead.

Because the material is a little bit too see through I decided to make a slip for this skirt.I used this fab post from Tasia and whipped one up in just under 2 hours.

Almost exactly as this picture was taken someone came out of our building (the pictures were taken in our block car park) pretty embarrassing but hilarious too. 

I made the slip out of the same fabric as the skirt (minus the dye) and added a pretty grey lace trim which you can see better in this picture:

I love this slip, it's so fun to be wearing a cheeky bit of lace under a fairly everyday outfit. I'll definitely be making more of these to go under other skirts! 

So.. what did I learn whilst making these garments?

Lessons Learnt on The Tie Dye Picnic Skirt:

1. I need more practice and patience when it comes to sewing on top of gathers: on both this skirt and my crescent skirt, I struggled with getting the waistbands sewn straight, what with all the gathers I had to sew through, the waistband on this skirt is a little wonky as a result but a little practice should fix it for next time.

2.How to make buttonholes: I love the buttonhole foot on my machine, it's so clever. It took me quite a few practice goes (and a little swearing, I can't lie)  to work it all out but it was so worth it. Hurray for buttonholes!

3.Polyester hates dye: ok, so I kind of knew this already but not to what extent, although I do love how they fabric turned out, I was pretty surprised at just how much the colour didn't take to the fabric.

4. Dye garments after you've sewn it up: I cut out my three skirt pieces first and then tied each one separately, this means the stripes don't really match up at the front, never mind, I know for next time!

I can see more of these skirts in my future, they are so easy to make and so cute. Thank you so much to Tilly for sharing this excellent skirt pattern, and for free, so very generous!

Alice x

Adventures in Tie Dye

Phew, it's been a while. I'd love to say that it's because I've been super busy doing all manner of exciting things, but that would be a lie. I just haven't been feeling the creative vibe these past few weeks so have had nothing to blog about! This week, however, I feel I've got my mojo back and have been making fun crafty plans and getting stuck in. For my first project, I've been playing with tie dye. My only experiences with tie dye is from summer camps, where we turned all our white clothes psychedelic! Whilst that was a LOT of fun when I was 9, I've gone for something a little more muted this time. I wanted big white and grey stripes (you know I love my monochrome) so I gathered my supplies...

I used a cheapo white cotton, Dylon hand dye in Antique Grey and loads of rubber bands. Tying up the fabric took a ridiculously long time, probably because my stripes were almost 3 inches wide!

All tied up and ready to go!

After what seemed like an eternity I was ready to dye. I mixed up my dye, per the instructions, and plunged the fabric in. i gave it a good stir and then left it to work for an hour (giving it the occasional prod in between bouts of washing up, living the dream y'all). Now I had the sneaking suspicion that this 'cotton' had some kind of polyester content, it was only £2 a metre after all, but I now suspect that polyester is the bulk of it's content. The dye did not take well. This dye is meant to come out as a mid to dark grey, it did not.

See, definitely pale or light grey. But you know what? I kinda like it, I think it turned out pretty cool. Now all that needs to be done is to sew it up into it's intended garment.
I've starting doing some sketches of possible garments using the croquis that came with a Simplicity Pattern Runway pattern I bought recently (more on that another time). It is so fun, I'm going to try and do it for all my projects. Here's the lady I drew for this project:

I'll be posting the finished skirt as soon as it's all sewn up and we can see how closely it matches the picture!!

Hope you're having a lovely weekend.

Cheerio
Alice x