Four years, maybe five, or twenty minutes, depending how you count

People will often ask me how long it takes me to make a garment.

Four or five years ago I was shopping at Metro Textile. As always, I bought some yardage off of some of the hundreds of bolts arrayed in the store. As always, I also poked around in the remnant bin by the door while Kashi, Metro's owner, tallied up my purchase.

I love the sense of possibility in a remnant bin. I see and touch and select fabrics that I otherwise never would think of purchasing.

One of the remnants was this,

less than a yard of light green with threads of not exactly the same shade of green woven through the weft. I was completely smitten by the fabric and knew that it was meant to be a simple pencil skirt. The cost of this length of fabric was negligible. Kashi might have even thrown it in for free if I had made a large enough purchase of other stuff.

That fabric sat in my stash for four or five years. My sewing pals call that marinating. Every few months I would pull that fabric out and drape it around me and it would somehow feel like a calculus problem that was too hard for me to solve.

Today I pulled it out and took another look at it. maybe because I have lost a little weight, but it was clear to me how I needed to proceed. I wrapped the fabric around my hips and figured how much had to be cut off of the end. I installed the zipper, ( in the center back, since you asked) and finished off the rest of the back seam. I put the too big skirt on to gauge how much darting I needed to do between the waist and the hips.

(A note to my sewing geeky friends-- a one seam skirt.)

I marked the placement of the darts by pressing them with an iron. I tried the skirt on again. The skirt needed two more darts, so I added them.

I finished the waistband with some 2-inch wide grosgrain tuned to the inside. I hemmed the skirt.

This isn't an exciting garment. I know that it has a certain New England dowdy appeal that isn't all that understandable to New Yorkers. It is the skirt equivalent of some of those austere Asian dishes that are not particularly about taste but are all about texture.

The length of fabric, the idea of a garment that was in my head is now fully a garment.

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