WIP Paralysis...

 
 
 
 


I need your help, fellow felters!

I'm really enamored with felted garments...jackets, jumpers, skirts...and I've been trying to learn enough to begin a clothing project.

...but I'm not the best seamstress in the world.

...and pattern-making or tailoring? Forget it!!

...so I decided to begin by making fabric for a skirt. Not impossible, right??

I had found some wonderful variegated yellow and red rovings at the VA S&W and I nuno felted them onto a piece of pale peach silk in wide 'stripey' sections.

...but my first mistake was trying out my new fold-over elastic (FOE) at the top of the silk prior to felting it.

...believe me, it caused me no small amount of difficulty while laying out my fiber.

Do not try this at home!!

The elastic, being elastic, wanted to pull my fabric into wrinkles when I needed it to lie flat for felting. Sighhhh.

...but ok, I got it felted, and even added some little silk leaf-cutouts that I traced from real leaves in my neighborhood.

Surprise, surprise (or should I say, mistake #2?), they really don't show after felting.

...then, I realized that I no longer knew which side to use as the skirt's 'outside'.

The 'nuno-ed' back-side looked as interesting to me as the striped front-side!

Ok-so here's where you come in...

1) I need to know which side to use as the outside (or do I make it elastic-waisted and reversible somehow?)

2) I also need your help in deciding 'how' to make the skirt. (Since it's nuno, and therefore 'drapey' and clingy, I'm really nervous about the fit.)

Do I make it with an elastic waist?

...or make it A-line and install a zipper?

...or make it a wrap skirt but put in some sort of 'modesty closure'?

(I haven't felt 100% safe in a wrap skirt since the 5th grade when mine blew open at recess!)

Thanks so much!!