What a Yoke

Another thrift shop skirt calling out to be refashioned! Problems with this one included this poofy bow, iridescent sequins, and a little problem with size.

I wasn't actually sure how I was going to go about this, so I just started in with the seam ripper to see what I was dealing with. First to go was the bow! I thought the ribbon trim and the sequins would come off just as easily, but that wasn't the case. Some exploration revealed seams I didn't expect to find. Uh oh.

I kind of panicked at that point, and cut the yoke away from the skirt entirely, which was not the best idea I've ever had. So that left me with a complicated yoke piece and a tube of fabric that was plenty wide, but too short. Darn! I needed some kind of yoke. I dug out a few patterns with yoke pieces to see if I could cut a new yoke from the facing pieces. Nope. They all curved too much and wouldn't fit on the fabric I had available.

Okay, no problem, I'll just make a yoke out of solid black, using Simplicity 4695. That done, I turned to the skirt. I knew I had to make the skirt fit the yoke, so I used the pattern pieces as a guideline for the overall shape. If you look at the pattern, you'll see that the front and back are cut in three pieces, which I couldn't do because of that inset strip on the original skirt, so I just pinned them to my fabric, overlapping them at the seams, and placing the inset strip at what looked like a good spot. (I wish I'd taken a picture of this, but I was so rattled by this point I just wanted to get done!) OH! One bonus: I got to keep the original hem!

Now, about the sequins. Sigh. I don't mind sequins, but on this fabric, iridescent sequins seemed like overkill. There weren't too many of them, so I thought it would be easy to cut them all off. Wrong. Their numbers seemed to multiply as soon as I started, AND the threads holding them on had to be individually worked out of the fabric. It was a giant pain. On a brighter note, the inside shot. I think I'm addicted to bias tape.

And the results!

Oh no! Now that I think about it...yes...I never resewed the hem there at the side seam! Oops!