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Hill Tribe Skirt

Finished Skirt

 

Recently I went to a sale of free trade Hill Tribe (Laos and Cambodia) textiles, art, and silver. I bought a recycled wrap skirt made of two pieces of cloth sewn together, more or less in the same fashion as you see them in my finished skirt in the photo. The fabrics are from the Houaphan Province of Laos. The machine sewing was done not very neatly, and with poor quality yellow thread. This is often the case with ethnic garments from developing countries. They will put untold hours into weaving and hand embroidering the precious cloth, then sew it together in the most utilitarian and casual manner.

So, the first order of business was to pick out the seam joining the two pieces, and re-sew that more carefully. Then, I needed to figure out how to make this into a skirt that would fit me, and be as long as possible. The reassembled piece was 61 inches wide by 39 inches long, and I like a skirt such as this to be about 45 inches around. I wanted to try to retain all of the original cloth, without cutting any of it away. I accomplished this by making a simple tube skirt with an elastic waistband. The side seams are actually just tucks, with some of the extra width folded inside. More of the extra was taken up by simply overlapping the fabric for the back kick pleat.

I wanted the skirt to be lined, to take some of the pressure off the hand-woven textiles. I went looking in my stash, and found a very full, size 6, black silk charmeuse skirt I had bought at a thrift store for the bargain price of $2.99, because it had a small stain near the hem. (No worries, I only wanted it for that three or four yards of silk!) So part of that became my lining and the waistband, too, as I never wear tucked-in blouses. 

I love to wear things made of these old fabrics. I feel surrounded and protected by the friendly spirits of those who made them so beautifully and lovingly, and wore them for awhile.

 

PS added 4/19/11

Saturday I found red fabric to make a blouse. It’s often hard to find a match for ethnic fabrics. I stopped in my nearby independent bolt-end-flat-fold shop, and they had some perfect silk. But the really special part was that there was Laotian woman there buying fabric, too. She was so pleased to see my skirt and we had a nice conversation.

 

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  1. sewsalot | | #1

    Really nice. I think it would be cute to wear with the re-worked black denim jacket that you made. Nice job!

  2. User avater
    mauraricketts | | #2

    wonderful! I travelled in the similar area almost 30 years ago. I still have many of the fabric lengths I bought at that time, all in perfect condition. I'm inspired to make at least one skirt based on your beautiful 'reconditioned' skirt.
    many thanks for sharing
    Maura

  3. FabricEnabler | | #3

    I love to wear ethnic garments. I have collected fabric from Japan, Panama, and Africa. (So much fabric--so little time!) It is enjoyable to receive the compliments from others when wearing these distinctive garments.

  4. Rabia | | #4

    Yes, it's really quite astonishing how you get beautiful ethnic fabric sewn together in the most rinky-tink fashion...I bought a Rajasthani cotton shawl beautifully batiked and stitched with sequins and mirrors in WHITE thread (the shawl was burgundy and blue ombreed together) sewn in HUGE long dangly runs on the inside that caught on EVERYTHING. It looked so AWFUL and was so wretched to wear, I set to work and re-sewed ALL the sequins (replacing them with glittery mylar sequins) all in BLACK thread, and used tiny running stitches between them to avoid long snaggy thread runs, and removed the big round mirrors (they were much too heavy for the fabric anyway) and replacing them with extra-large sequins in patterns. It took FOREVER...but now it is BEAUTIFUL; a veritable "cloak of lights"!

  5. Rabia | | #5

    Oh, and I forgot to say: the skirt is BEAUTIFUL; I love that fabric, and you did a bang-up job re-sewing it!

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