Striped Split Skirt

There was one thing behind building many sets from the same few items, that made it easier: I did not plan to use new patterns, but tried and true ones.

Ones I already used with succes, I don't have to buy them now, I don't even have to print and glue/tape them together, because I've kept what I used before. However, almost all of them needed some modification, either to resize them, or change something in them.

I considered for a while the striped bottom on the advertisement drawing I showed yesterday, trying to figure out, whether it is a skirt, a pair of bloomers, or what? At the end, I decided on a split skirt, because a), on the drawing there isn't much that would point toward it being some kind of pants/trousers/breeches... however b) it is a bycycle garment, it should be bifurbicated, besides, then I can talk about the changes sports (and biking) brought into the fashion. 

I knew where to go for the fabric (this time not to I Love Textil), because I've already made a pair of prisoner's striped pants (for a Xmas funny scene), and all I needed to check if the store still has some. It is somewhat thicker, more massive than a plain cotton, it has twill weave, but still soft enough for a skirt. It was not cheap, so I had to be very careful and creative with cutting it.

My problem with the first one I made was that it did not have any pockets, and though I thought about it a lot since, I could not really figure out how/where to include them. 

The split skirt is closing on its two sides with a buttoned panel, that made it impossible to put those pockets into the side seam. I though about making a sewn on (patch) pocket, but I thought it would ruin the lines of the striped fabric. At the end, I desided to make a welt-pocket, that runs paralell with the buttonband. 

With bycycling getting popular from the 1890-ies, women needed clothes that adapted better to the more active lifestyle. Of course, these attempts constantly met with strong opposition, like many place (restaurants, cafes, etc) did not let in women, if not "properly" dressed (ie: not in proper skirts). That is why they started to figure out clothes that looked like tranditional clothes (skirts), but still allowed more movements.

The pattern is the Reconstructing History pattern, from which I wrote longer when I first used it.