Gold ‘wrap’ skirt – Burda 12/2015 #115

I made a gold skirt at Christmas – and here it is. It’s taken me less than 6 months to blog about it so I’m still technically on schedule, as we’re closer to Xmas 2015 than to Xmas 2016. Just.

The pattern is from Burda December 2015 – it’s on their website here.

The fabric is some extremely cheap glittery gold polyester which I bought at the Harrogate knitting and stitching show, I got about 4 metres. I didn’t bother pre-washing it as I suspected that all the gold would fall straight off. In fact I still haven’t washed it. But I have only worn it once. It turns out that metallic gold skirts don’t get a lot of wear from January to April. Maybe I can bust it out again this summer though.

It’s a really great pattern actually. It’s called a ‘wrap skirt’ but it’s actually just a stitched down pleat that sits underneath a yoke and waistband. In no way does it ‘wrap’. Burda, stop trying to deceive us. It’s bad enough that you torture us with your pattern instructions, which seem to have been translated from German by someone who has recently taken four weeks of ‘Speak English for fun and profit!’ evening classes.

This fabric was not very easy to iron so I ended up topstitching most of the seams down.

This photo shows how the pleat works. The facings aren’t attached to the body of the skirt at all.

I put an exposed zipper on this which was probably a mistake – the fabric is a bit too lightweight and the zip is a bit too heavy. The waistband fastens with a button on the back.

The pattern actually makes a mid-calf length skirt, which I did cut out, but I ended up chopping off most of it and making it into a mini skirt. Some lovely people on Instagram helped me decide whether to go long or short.

Please do excuse the hastily pinned up hems.

I would like to make the longer version again soon, especially after going to all the effort of tracing the pattern out and adding all the seam allowances.

I keep looking at Burda patterns for coats and stuff that have about 15 pattern pieces, but my brain just shuts down at the thought of tracing out alllllll of those facings and fiddly little pieces. Maybe one day. At the moment, 5 pattern pieces is about my limit for Burda.

Here is a terrible quality selfie I took on the only occasion this skirt has been out of the house so far, a work Christmas party. But you can sort of see the sparkle.

If you are a fan of this fabric, my sister has also made a dress out of it which looks really awesome.

It wasn’t the nicest thing in the world to sew with, and I have no idea what I’ll do with the 2 metres I have left. A gold jacket? Some kind of mad gold shirt that will be the sweatiest thing ever? Most likely it will sit on my shelf until I do some panic sewing next Christmas. Metallic clothes seem like such a great idea until January 1st when reality hits.