Today I'm all kinds of nasty sick with some gross cold that I caught a few days ago. It's totally kicking my ass. Sooooo I thought I'd post up the shit ton of photos I took while making my target bag skirt from a couple weeks ago. I did not take photos of making the top because I thought it was going to be all super simple and straightforward.....It kind of was. It was also kind of just a pain in my ass that didn't do what I wanted. So yeah.
I still need to take a nice photo of the skirt on, but here is a shot of me holding it up. I promise to get a nice photo of it on my ass soon.
Also, this entire tutorial is with stupid webcam photos, but hey. I had to work with what I had.
It is high waisted and very fitted to my waist. The outer skirt bubbles out and the under skirt stays down. It is made out of recycled Target plastic bags, a zipper, and thread. All in all, the final product came out very reminiscent of the inspiration dress.
And this lovely creation is my inspiration piece. I have no idea where it's from except that it was in Vogue. There was no info with the photo when I stumbled over it.
My skirt is very structured and stiff, so to speak. It moves and I can comfortably sit in it and all that kind of stuff, but because of the plastic it keeps the pleats very nicely and it was much easier to work with than fabric. It doesn't fray or stretch or anything. It just stays all nice and crisp and clean. Loved working with it. So I highly recommend this technique, even if it is tedious in regards to how long it takes to iron and such.
And I must fair warn everyone, I just flew by the seat of my pants when I made my skirt. I happened to get super lucky and the random sizes I was cutting for panels just worked perfect. I mean FUCKING PERFECT. The only thing I knew that I had to match was my waist measurement.
Materials:
*plastic bags. LOTS. We went to a Target and asked them for bags that have been turned back into them and we got a huge haul of bags that had been used. It really defeats the recycling side of this if you just go get new bags.
*sewing machine. In regards to the needle I used, I had no problem using a normal needle when sewing the skirt parts. When I attached the waistband, I opted to use a heavy duty needle.
*thread
*zipper. my zipper is 13" or 14". Happened to find it in my man's grandma's sewing kit.
*iron and ironing board
*large sheets of paper
Plan of attack
I decided (after ironing too many panels together) that I wanted to use 4 panels for my outer skirt. I also ended up using 4 panels for my under skirt. And I wanted the square cuts along the bottom to alternate. I got super damn lucky when they actually perfectly alternated each other. I was shocked and giddy. I knew I wanted a wide waist band and a zipper up the back middle.
After doing an ironing test, I decided that I liked the thickness of 6 layers of plastic for my outer skirt, and 3 layers for my under skirt. My waistband is 2 pieces of 6 layered plastic sewn together.
Outer skirt
*4 panels of 6 layers (of plastic) = 3 bags with handles per panel/12 total
Underskirt
*4 panels of 3 layers = 3 bags per panel/12 total
Waistband
*2 panels of 6 layers = 3 bags
And one handy note: Try to avoid ripping out seams and pins. I used scotch tape to tack things together, but if it was left on for too long (as in a few hours) it was harder to get off without kind of ripping your plastic. If you do botch a seam and really need to rip it out, cut it out and then iron that seam line just a little bit. Be wary and check it often while ironing it or you will scrunch your plastic and be really bummed out. But if you're careful, you can iron the botched seam away enough that it's not noticeable.
Step 1: Ironing the plastic together
I used this tutorial to fuse my bags. I did it in a well ventilated area and chances are, it caused some brain damage regardless. What doesn't these days? I read a shit ton of stuff about fusing plastic. Every now and then someone had a freak out about doing it and said do not. If you are freaked out, don't do it. I decided to risk my own braincells. They are mine to kill anyways. And I did not experience any bad side effects they talked about. So yeah. Just throwing that out there that there is the chance this is hurting you and blah blah blah.
For my skirt, I decided to work with the shape that the bags already are since I want that square shaped hem line. So instead of chopping off the handles, I kept them on my bags. I simply cut the bottom seam off then flattened the side pleats out to get a large sheet.
And make sure to use paper on each side of your plastic. I derped out and had one moment of "Oh! That's not fused! *presses iron to plastic* OH NO!!" Yeah. It melts right onto your iron. Luckily not much touched since I jerked it back up almost instantly. And it came off after ironing a bit on the paper.
And in regards to the paper I used, they mention printer paper in the tutorial. Bleh. For me, it was too thin and burnt my plastic too fast, making it shrivel and get all scrunchy and messy. But it was handy for a quick touch up spot. I used some large art paper that is a little thicker. It worked lovely and gave me a large working area.
For each outer skirt panel, you will need 3 flattened bags with handles. Iron 3 bags together to get 6 layers of plastic.
This is just one bag to start with. Lay it flat on paper on the ironing board. The front and back handles should line up with each other and it should look like an extra wide bag.
Put your top paper over and iron.
Second bag with handles flipped down in top right.
All 3 bags ironed together equaling 6 layers.
For the under skirt, I cut the bottom seam and handles off. Then I cut up the side seam on one side of the bag and opened it completely out. Iron 3 fully opened bags for each panel of the underskirt. Sorry, I didn't take any photos of some of this ironing phase shit. I didn't think about doing photos until later. hurrrrrr.....
Outer skirt
*4 panels of 6 layers (of plastic) = 3 bags with handles per panel/12 total.
You could of course add in more panels and adjust the layer amount to your liking.
I did some crazy method of laying each panel on my ironing paper that was re-purposed into pattern paper and tracing around each bag to find what the largest size was that I could get out of the smallest panel.....if that makes sense. You can skip this if you want and be less crazy.
In the end my pieces were
*width: 16 3/4"
*length: 18 3/4" (top to absolute bottom) / 13 3/4" (top to cut out in middle)
*squares on bottom: 5" x 4 1/2"
And if I remember correctly, I worked with a 1/4" seam allowance.
This is what each cut out panel looked like for my outer skirt.
Next I drew up a little design very similar to the inspiration dress and cut out a stencil on some scrap paper. I traced it on to the backside of each square section with a ball point pen then cut it out with an exacto blade.
This is my pattern piece. It is slightly off center on purpose. The wider side will be put against the edge of the panel with the seam allowance on it, that way the cutout image is more centered once the panels are sewn together.
This is a shot of the stencil traced on the under skirt (you get the idea.)
Cut out all of the designs then sew the four panels together down the side with a straight stitch. Now you have a super long section with lovely little cutouts along the bottom.
Ta-da! I have it awkwardly folded in to get it in the webcam shot. Sorrrrrry.
Under skirt
And now we are onto the underskirt.
*4 panels of 3 layers = 3 bags per panel/12 total
After cutting to size, each panel came out to:
*width: 12"
*length: 17 1/2" (at shortest on sides) / 22" (absolute longest part)
*squares on bottom: 4 1/2" x 4 1/2"
Just after ironing.
Pattern piece for the bottom square along the hem. Yay junkmail! I just traced the square bottom I used for the outer skirt pattern and cut off that seam allowance. Then trace around this onto your 4 panels and clean up the sides.
Your 4 panels should all look like this now.
Trace the cutout design on back side of panel and cut out with exacto blade. Same as before lalalala.
Sew your 4 panels together into one long piece.
Now, if you're like me and just winging it as you go, you need to decide how long you want the underskirt to hang out from the outer skirt. For me, most of this decision simply rested on me wanting my ass not to hang out of the dress. If I just wore the outer skirt, it would have been peek-a-boo times of my ass and hoo-ha.
However, if you just measure shit out and make decisions before ironing everything, you can avoid extra steps like this.
The under skirt 4 panels sewn and cut and a fold for where I want to chop off the top excess.
Pleating the skirts
Now you get to bust out your snazzy math skills and figure out your pleats. I'm going to just use my measurements for the example but I'll write it out the method as well.
1. Measure your waist.
2. Measure the length of each skirt.
3. Subtract your waist from each skirt. This is the amount of "fabric" that you need to pleat and make disappear so that it fits your waist nice and snug.
4. Take each answer from #3 and divide by 4.
5. Divide the answer from #4 by the number of pleats you want.
6. The answer from #5 is the size of each pleat.
--:--
1. My waist is 29" but I chose to bump it up to 30" to have a nice even number to work with and because the plastic is thicker than fabric, so I thought it would be safe. Later I had to take in my waistband at the sides to make up for this inch, so yeaaaah. It made my math a lot easier so I'd personally rather take 2 tucks than explode my brain from figuring out even starting from 29.
2. outer skirt - 64"
under skirt - 45.5"
3. outer skirt - 64-30 = 34"
under skirt - 45.5-30 = 15.5"
4. outer skirt - 34 / 4 = 8.5"
under skirt - 15.5 / 4 = 3.88" = 4" (I decided to round it up to 4" for simplicity and because it was my thinnest and undermost layer, I knew I could risk losing the .12"
5. outer skirt - 8.5 / 2 = 4.25"
under skirt - 4 / 2 = 2"
I wanted 2 pleats per panel.
6. outer skirt will have 2 pleats. Each pleat will be 4.25"
under skirt will have 2 pleats, Each pleat will be 2"
I decided that I liked how inverted pleats worked with the plastic. They really made the skirt bubble out like I wanted.
Inverted pleats.
I used a side of my ironing paper and marked out where I would make each crease. After making each crease, I used clear scotch tape to tape the pleats in place for sewing. If you use pins, they will leave holes in your plastic. The plastic is awesome to work with in this step. It creases so perfectly and keeps its crease. I love it.
Basically, I set up a template to use on one panel at a time. I marked each edge of the panel then I marked where I wanted the pleats to be and the center of each pleat. Then I transferred the marks onto the plastic. Then I folded the pleats according to my marks and taped them.
The pleats on the under skirt.
The outer skirt pleated.
Inside view of the outer skirt's pleats.
Run a seam up about half of the back of the underskirt. This skirt will not be attached to the zipper. If it is, it will bubble out with the outer skirt and you want it to lay flat underneath, kind of like a slip. So think of a dress you have that has a liner in it that isn't attached to the zipper. It's just sewn up to where the zipper is and the top is left open so you can fit your woman hips and ass through there without popping a seam.
Next, run a stitch along the top to catch all of the pleats. Keep it close to the edge. Then use a few small pieces of tape to tack the under and outer skirt together along the top edge and run a seam along the top again, binding them together. They should be the same width. If they are not the same width, you're pleats are off. If you are comfortable with your sewing skills, you can skip sewing each skirt separately first.
This is the sewn pleats along the waist. Now you can put this down and start new pieces.
Waistband
*2 panels of 6 layers = 3 bags.
6" x 32" (or whatever your waist is with just a little extra so you don't come up short while sewing.)
I didn't really plan shit out, so I had ironed 2 extra panels for my outer skirt that I did not use, so I just cut 2 pieces out of one of those panels. So I just made 2 short panels of 6"x16" and sewed them together. I didn't want to waste more plastic.
I sewed them together along a short side, then pressed the edge out to each side and top stitched each side of the original seam. So these are the steps for making my smashed together waistband.
My two shorter panels. Or you could just have one long one.
Seam and top stitch.
Back side of top stitch so you can see the pressed out edges.
Now you will fold it in half horizontally all the way across this long ass panel.
Me blocking the bad back light like a spaz. And this is only one panel, not bother sewn together.
Tape tack your waistband onto the top of your skirt and sew all the way around. You will probably have a little extra. Just cut that waistband excess off.
Front with waistband on.
Back so you can see how the under skirt is partially closed.
And now you will finally sew in your zipper, which I'm sure is everybody's favorite part. This was actually my first time doing a zipper and it's not really done totally right, but I'm pumped. I sewed the bottom part of the outer skirt up to where the zipper will start. Then I changed out the foot on my machine to a zipper foot (fucking love this thing) and just sewed up one side of the zipper to one side of the skirt/waistband. Then repeat on the other side. I had to move the zipper around a little while sewing, but whatever.
Outside with zipper open.
Inside with zipper open. And inner skirt not attached. Yay.
Outside of skirt with zipper closed.
And now the skirt is done. Go frolic in your recycled bag skirt.
And then keel over and sleep.
I hope this helps or inspires someone out there. It took me too long to make all of this happen in a logical sense, which I hope it is. Ffffff.
Toodles. <3
