The winter is coming

[beachlion]

After the long flower skirt with the sexy zippers, I wanted to make a more serious skirt from the same template.

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Walking in those long skirts is quite an experience. I feel just walking is not appropriate, floating is called for. But alas, this skirt will not see any publc airing in the near future.

[Stevie D]

That's great! I love long skirts and yours is really nice - very stylish and elegant. I know what you mean by 'floating' when wearing a long skirt. I would wear that in public in a heartbeat.

[Big and Bashful]

Yep, that is my kind of skirt, although I do like pockets on my skirts.

[Freedomforall]

I like it. Can I place an order?

[lazerr]

Looks great. I have to admit, this is just what I was looking for last winter.

[beachlion]

For the next long skirt I had to wait for the delivery of a heavier denim to be able to beat the cold. The heavy denim that was left in my store was just sufficient to make a knee long skirt. That fabric has been cut and is waiting for sewing.

Sewing it was sort of routine by now. Only the heavier fabric needed more attention where it was folded. In the last step, Murphy's law came into play. The waistband has two snaps. Each snap consists of four parts: the button, the spring cup, the snap and the stud. They should be attached in the same sequence. I had two sets left so I should not make mistakes.

Normally I group the parts and there I made my first mistake. It became only clear to me after I rivetted both studs to the cups. With no spares I had to go out today in a slight blizzard to get my supplies.

With enough parts, I started again. The right parts were together only at the wrong places. The button was where the stud should be. Removing the parts with a drill was now also routine. The third try was succesful, at last.

I wanted something reddish as a top for the picture and the lumberjack shirt was the easiest to grab.

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I will make a black one, also in a heavier fabric, and that will be the last of this model.

[crfriend]

I will make a black one, also in a heavier fabric, and that will be the last of this model.

Offhand, I'd say you likely need more of a flared hemline that what I seem to see in the photo, else you're going to have a bit of hard time maintaining any sort of stride.

I have a few Victorian-era patterned "walking skirts", and those have a ten-foot circumference around the lower hem. They give me plenty of room to stretch my legs, and, if pressed, I can actually run in them. Yours look rather constraining.

[beachlion]

Walking is no problem at all. Before I made a template for a ankle long skirt, I measured my step. I even measured the space I needed for my knees when walking and climbing stairs. Knee space was more of an issue than walk space. As an engineer I'm used to do some initial research, even for something plain as sewing.

The hem is 59" (150 cm) and that is very comfortable to walk in with my 5' 10.5" (179 cm). From the over-the-knee skirts I know the wind is more of a hindrance than the hem length. The wind pushes the fabric against your knees and the friction is quite noticable with walking.

When going up the stairs, I just have enough space built-in to master the steps. When one knee lifts the fabric, the hem just touches the other ankle.

[beachlion]

Today I wore the long skirt of the last picture and my wife and some friends could see my effort from the sweatshop. My wife was not impressed but I got not much comments from the friends. Maybe they were too polite. I still had to make breakfast for them so that could be another reason. Wife's comment:"You look like a priest."

According to my watch, I did about a kilometer in this skirt today. With more experience when doing my daily things, I could use a little more space in the hem area. No problem with a normal pace but for certain manoeuvres I could use an extra 10 cm hem. Also climbing steps asks for some consideration to not step on the hem.

I like the skirt because it is quite warm. I think however this is the end of this experiment. I will try to see if a shortening of 10 or 15 cm gives a reasonable skirt.

[skirtyscot]

A few centimetres off and it would be ankle-length, which would be OK. But beware of shortening it to calf-length, it's very a hard look to pull off.