Insty-Skirt
What color would you call this skirt? Acid/grass/Kool-aid green? I don't have a Pantone wheel handy, or I'd give it a number. That's not very romantic. Can you imagine walking into a fabric store and saying, "I want the poly/nylon fabric in FF203456." The sales clerk would just give you a puzzled look. It's much more effective to say, "Oh my gosh, I adore that lettuce/metallic shot silk dupioni. I must have it. Give me three yards of it please." The employee would whirl faster than a robot and pick up the exact fabric without hesitation. And she would be right. So numbers don't mean much in the tactile, visual world of textiles unless you're printing a book and every hue must be just right or the cheeseburger on page 52 is going to look very unappealing.

Anyhow, back to the skirt. This is the Bottom of the Summer (the other bottom on my body is with me all seasons, thank you). I wear this slip-on skirt constantly since I made it last week before I met a bunch of writers at Elephant & Castle pub in downtown Chicago. I wanted to impress. Most of all, I wanted to wear something else besides the black variation of this same piece of apparel. Basically, I wanted to look like I actually do laundry and own other clothes to all the people who see me on a regular basis - the postman, bus driver, the dogs and their owners who pass me on their daily jaunts in the neighborhood.

I sewed that skirt faster than it takes me to get to the grocery store and back on public transportation! I laid the fabric on the carpet in my bedroom and put the sole pattern piece down twice. Cut and snip - two sides of a skirt. I attached the two sides lightening-fast on my baby Viking. Then I whipped out the bathing-suit elastic, did a three-step zig-zag (similar to the triple step in lindy hop) on that stretchy stuff. Then I flipped that edge over, and secured it inside with a a normal zig-zag. Done!

I put on a black girdle underneath instead of a skirt and It Felt Good. All lower curves on the southern part of my being looked smooth. I was happy.

Now, I have to say I'm doing just as my niece Jackie suggested. When I asked her last year how she would wear a certain crochet skirt that was inadvertently made by a certain person to fit a child, she wrinkled her nose and said, "A pair of shorts."

At the time I was appalled. Shorts with a couture crochet skirt? This young girl certainly wasn't going to be the recipient of a certain handicrafter's wizardry.

Now I'm doing just that. Wearing shorts with my skirt, although I have yet to try it with the crochet kind. But a girdle on a hot day is so much more comfortable than a slip that sticks. What do you think?