Sometimes several ideas and inspirations collide when you're pondering new treasures you want for your handmade wardrobe and a little bit of magic happens!
Picture this ~ Hastings Old Town in 2024, a vintage loving gal has just been mesmerised by the Maison Margiela Artisanal show and is dreaming of full skirts and Paris of the early 1930's mixed with some kind of Gothic Edwardiana.
A need for a skirt or 2 in my handmade wardrobe and these aesthetics whirling in my head culminated in the Gwendoline Skirt ~ my latest pattern cutting and sewing tutorial for Tara's Stitch Coven over on my Patreon.
I love a full and swishy skirt but every time I make a traditional dirndl style, essentially a rectangle gathered onto a waistband, I don't feel quite right in it and the skirt ends up languishing in my wardrobe, unworn.
Looking in detail at the Margiela skirts, I began to think about ways of adding the dirndl in a way that would be more flattering. The skirts in this beautiful couture show were all constructed over corsets which gave them a fitted at the waist and hip silhouette, then a flared or circular main body. And I remembered that many moons ago, I'd made a yoked and gathered skirt so decided to revisit this concept for my exclusive tutorial for my coven members on Patreon.
The Gwendoline skirt is a really simple pattern to draft and straightforward to sew and you have a myriad ways in which you can take the concept to suit your unique sense of style.
I made my sample version in very fine black needlecord, which definitely gave me the Gothic Edwardiana vibe I wanted, and I lined the yoke with a beautiful lawn from Jacobs Haberdashery {I got the needlecord from there too!}
You can make the skirt with or without a waistband or add it to a bodice of your choice to make a fabulous dress! That's something I would love to do for a Spring Sewing project and I'm also thinking about making some kind of patchwork version with my much treasured Liberty scraps.
I'm so pleased with my Gwendoline, a really simple concept that really goes a long way in my handmade wardrobe.
Love, Tara x