Gordon tartan skirt

Pattern: improvised

Fabric: about 70 cm wool tartan fabric and 70 cm black acetate lining fabric

Haberdasheries: an invisible zipper

This fabric was a present from my husband, bought in Edinburgh on one of our holidays in Scotland! I decided to make a contemporary skirt from it, rather than anything resembling a kilt.

The fabric was very easy to work with. Wool is easy anyway, but I could also follow the tartan pattern to cut straight, to determine the height of the waistband and the length of the skirt, and to make the pleats.

I lined the skirt with black acetate; just attached it to the tartan fabric and sewed them as one, and invisibly hemmed the skirt by folding the tartan around the lining and hand stitching it in place.

I used an invisible zipper. I’d used one before, on the previous contemporary skirt I made, but that was almost a year ago, so I didn’t really remember how I did it. This time I wanted to get it in even more invisibly, but on my first attempt I hit one tooth with my machine needle, which meant the zipper didn’t work anymore and I had to take it out again. Oh no! After that I ended up sewing the new zipper in by hand, as that gave me more control over how close to the teeth I sewed. I did my best to precisely line up all the lines in the tartan pattern, but of course some got away! Still, the skirt looks a lot more neat than most store-bought tartan and check items, which appear to be cut and sewn randomly...

This skirt turned out just how I imagined it! =)