I love sparkly stuff.  LOVE!  Believe it or not, when browsing through the malls, the sparklies always catch my eye first.  Something about little flashes of light, I think.  Anyways, DD1 saw this lovely little sequin number in the October 2013 Burda and I jumped on the bandwagon for two reasons:  everyone needs a sparkly skirt if they’re a teen, and it would fit the Burda Challenge 2013.

The sequins are sewn onto a stretch mesh in rows, and the stretch mesh posed a slight problem with this design, mostly because of those yoke seams.  Well, there was a problem in my mind because I’ve only ever worked with sequined fabric once before, and it remains a UFO.  I was determined to not let this be a UFO, and prayed I could sew through the sequins instead of having to remove and re-attach them from the seam allowances.  I could.  *whew*  I did remove sequins from seam allowances along the waist and the bottom edge of the yoke along the CB panels.  I would not have needed to do this if the sequins had been small and circular, but as you can see from the pics, these are an elongated shape, about 5mm long.

What about pressing seam allowances on a sequin fabric?  I didn’t catchstitch each seam allowance in place, which, as I write this, seems like it should have been the default for this type of fabric. I used a linen pressing cloth and a low iron and carefully pressed each seam.

The pattern is straight-forward, with each of the yoke pieces lengthened as much as you like to form the lining.  The pleated skirt consists of two lengths of fabric pleated into 5 pleats per piece, 6 inches deep and spaced 3 inches apart.  Now, if you understood that, good job, because I am mathematically challenged and it took a good 20 minutes to figure out how such equations would fit the lower edge of the yokes.

I flat-felled the lining seams to keep them tidy, and for the CB seam, turned the seam allowances under and stitched them down below the zip opening.  The lining is a poly taffeta.  I wanted a lining without stretch to allow the mesh freedom to move without being stretched.  Hopefully this will prolong the life of the sequin mesh, because the mesh is quite (annoyingly) delicate.I hand-picked the zipper and did not use an invisible one.  Seriously, I could not imagine inserting an invisible zip into this fabric.  I don’t go looking for sewing nightmares on purpose!!  The zip is 9 inches and hangs down past the yoke, according to directions.  Interesting, because zips extending past the bottom of a garment à la couture have been rolling around my sewing mind lately.I wondered about this approach at first, but it was the only way to insert the zip without putting a CB seam through the pleated lower skirt, and after fiddling around a bit, decided I didn’t want a CF/CB seam. I handpicked the zip to the CB of the yoke seams, leaving the bottom seam allowance free to attach to the lower skirt.  It worked well, and I got to try something new.

The hem is catchstitched into place.There’s no waistband on this skirt, and I debated adding a grosgrain ribbon for one, but decided against it.  I thought the clean sequin yoke looked the best.  And, because no waistband equals a difficulty in hanging the skirt, I added little ribbon hangers.Verdict:  a sparkly skirt!!! So pretty and so fun to put together.