It's A Wrap!

If that isn't the corniest title ever, I don't know what is.

Anyway, here's a pool wrap skirt I made yesterday. 

I call it my modesty wrap. 

It allows me to walk unself-consciously from the changing room to the pool, past hundreds of people half my age, without hunching, cowering, scooting, ducking or tugging on something.

I would've bought it, of course, were something like this actually buy-able in stores. Yes, I looked. But it seems the only skirt-esque bottoms on sale are swimsuit skort separates (say that whole sentence fast, 5 times). Why? Why don't people make slip-on lycra skirts? Or wraps? They'd be so cute, and I'd buy one in every color. 

I have an old sheer wrap from when I was younger, skinny and swimming a lot. I still use it, but it doesn't provide as much uh... coverage as it used to. Actually, I think it was the style then, to show some leg. But I'm people's mother now, and living in the conservative Midwest, not some wild tropical island, so I decided I should at least have a wrap that.. well, actually wrapped.

I used swimsuit fabric. I suppose I should've been more adventurous and used a print, but solids look more sporty, and I'd pick sporty over pretty any day. Got both blue pieces for about $4 and made one wrap for me and one for the mother-in-law. So that makes it $2 a wrap. That's a good deal.

Here- I'll show you the shape of the thing. It's based on that old wrap I was telling you about, but wider so that it overlaps in front. I was using the wide aperture lens and too lazy to switch to the one that let me zoom out enough to capture the whole skirt, so here it is folded in half. I will say this by way of a drafting/cutting tip: see that curved waistline? The more curvy your waist/hip area is (i.e. the more hourglassy you are), the more curved that waistline should be. It's sort of like an arc that's part of a circular skirt, you know? Conversely, the more equal your waist is to your hip, the straighter that can be.

Not doing a tutorial - reason=lazy, so here are some extra photos to explain stuff.

This is where the straps join the skirt.

Here is where the straps tie 

after wrapping around each other on the other side

and over the back.

I mentioned in this post that I don't like twin needles on swimsuit fabric because they give a crude finish (sorry, twin needle fans). I don't own a coverstitch machine, so I finished the waist hem the old-fashioned way - with a double fold and two single-stitched lines sewn on the wrong side of the fabric.

The bottom/side edges of the skirt were rolled-hemmed on the serger. 

Have you noticed that I've been quite poor at procrastinating lately? More bad news: this pool wrap was yet another manifestation of this frightening phenomenon. I mean, not only were both skirts done in about 2-3 hours from start to finish, I also went shopping for the fabric on Monday and turned it into a garment within 24 hours, straight out of the plastic bag. It never even attained "stash" status. I'm worried. It doesn't sound like me. Have I been abducted by aliens? Who's actually writing this post? Should I see a doctor? Or a shrink? Eek.