Patchwork skirt / Rainbow skirt

I found my inspiration for this skirt in this awesome blog by Megan: http://craftyintentions.blogspot.com/2008/07/and-sewn-into-seams-were-forty-one.html

My skirt is a bit different from hers, but the idea is similar.

Voluminous skirt

I started with lots of pieces of interestingly patterned and coloured fabric which I chopped into squares and then stitched into strips.

The waistband was made by bending the cloth over and stitching it, making a “little channel” through which the belt is passed. i.e. It’s a gathered belt which fits almost any size of waist.

All materials

As I am 1.55 m tall (5’1″), the skirt needed to be 110 cm long (43″). So each little “patch” is 13 x 13 cm (5.1″ square), with 1.5 cm (0.6″) margin included for stitching.

All layers

I had 9 tiers of differently colored patches. Each tier is 1½ times longer than the previous (more or less):

  1. White layer – 10cm (4″) wide belt
  2. Pink tier – 12 patches
  3. Red tier – 18 patches
  4. Orange tier – 27 patches
  5. Yellow – 44
  6. Light Green – 66
  7. Dark Green – 103
  8. Light Aqua – 155
  9. Light Blue – 233
  10. Dark Blue – 350

Lenght

So the next thing was to ruffle it and stich the layers together. I waited for a nice cool evening (the temperature per day reached 36C / 97F) and started my epic journey. So if you have been following – the dark blue line is 35m (­~115 ft) long, and the light blue 23m and a bit (~75 ft).

Left side

Here is the result – before the thread end tying, which took me 3 days to complete.

Me and Šuriks

Me and Šuriks (the dog) a month after starting the project.

You may also like...

8 Responses

  1. Candice says:

    Absolutely Love this!

  2. Sebastian says:

    Very pretty. Both the skirt, and yourself.

  3. Val Lovelace says:

    Totally awesome. How heavy is it with all that fabric???

    • eponases says:

      It’s quite heavy – I think somewhere between 1.6kg and 2kg (although I don’t have any scales here that can measure to that sort of precision so I can’t go and check).

      Probably best not to wear it if there’s a chance of rain 😛

  4. carine says:

    tous vraiment tres jolie des broderie au patchork

  5. Lauren says:

    That is truly beautiful! Is there a pattern somewhere you could link? I’d love to try to make one myself

    • eponases says:

      No, I saw Megan’s skirt and formed the plan for mine from her pictures and description. There is no pattern in the usual sense – the description above is the closest that there is, and is what I used to make the skirt.

      Have fun stitching 🙂
      -Linda

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.