Tuesday, November 01, 2016

Tartan wool skirt

A classic oldfashioned pleated tartan skirt in blue/white/red. It was homemade with handsewn details, by a really talented seamstrees. The fabric is in pristine condition. I think this could easily be from the 70'es or maybe even earlier.
I admired the handiwork all the time while working on this skirt. Wow, you seldom see this level of craftmansship nowadays (unless you buy tailormade suits).

So, it was a bit too long and slightly too narrow in the waist.

Since it is a wrap skirt, all I needed to do was to move the button and the buckle. And I shortened it by 10 cm (4").
(The wrap is brilliant and so fitting of the thriftiness of old days. Then you didn't have to buy a new skirt, if your size went up, but could do as I didn and simply move the closures).

Classical styling, although I will probably wear it with something more casual. But here I am librarian for a day.


Funny that I have increased the waist of the skirt by 5 cm (2"), but I actually look smaller around the waist. That's what happens when clothes fit properly.

8 comments:

  1. That is a beautiful old kilt. You rescued someone's hard work and gave it another life.

    ReplyDelete

  2. Sooo very true the different impression of 'fitting clothes'; I can watch this working eeevery day on my husband:
    Stout 'cudlybear' which would not fit well into his 'allocated size' if I would not lay on 'cheating hands' to make either the 'bigger/wider yet longer size waaay shorter' or the 'lengthwise fitting items a tad wider' = fitting to him.
    A known/familiar 'digit/number/size' of a garment does not make it automatically fitting, it's an assistance to aid ones search for fitting clothes and sometimes a different than 'usual' digit/number/size might be required to make things look better than sticking to the 'old' (and usually 'more pleasing') digit/number/size of a garment.
    I myself have usually to search a size range of up to 3 - 4 different sizes and still make amendments to the final fit.

    ReplyDelete
  3. A couple of changes and now it looks fantastic on you! I like it styled with the boots!

    ReplyDelete
  4. So love finding beautifully-made things secondhand! This looks great on you. Well done :)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Lovely refashion. It looks much nicer in the new lentgh.

    Cindy - EOD
    Upcycled Design Lab

    ReplyDelete
  6. Thank you for posting this - I'm so happy I saw it.....great idea. I have a similar kilt which dates indeed from late '70s/early '80s and I could never throw it out because it is such wonderful quality and beautifully made. I had forgotten all about it. But now i'm going to dig it out and do the same thing you did straight away! Why did I never think of it before??

    ReplyDelete

Please contact the editor on duty if you have problems posting comments.