Problem Solving - Iron mark

I had a chance to do a bit more problem solving recently.

A friend of mine struggles with her eye sight. She was pressing a black skirt and didn't realise the iron was too hot. Luckily, she was pressing with the skirt inside out. But unluckily, the iron melted away nearly all of the fabric in one spot. You could almost get away with it being unnoticeable, except for the fact that it made a part of the mark like a sheer see-through fabric.

The mark was about 11 cm up from the hem and was about 10 cm deep. But, the see-through part was only about 5cm.

In this photo, I have already started chopping and changing. But you can see what the mark looked like.

Because the skirt was rather long on her, we first considered chopping the length off all together. However, when we held it up to her, we could tell that it would be just a mite too short for her. Maybe fine if she never sat down!

So, I thought...What if? What if I took out a strip of fabric right the way round the skirt that would get rid of the area where the worst of the mark was. We folded it a bit and held it up...looked like a possibility. And on top of that, it looked like it would actually make the skirt look more interesting. A design feature. Presently, a lot of fashions have a sort of horizontal visual line of some sort placed about that far from the hemline.

As you can see from the above photo, I went ahead with that plan. Inside the skirt, I used a ruler and chalk and marked a line up from the hem at the 16cm level. Then I did the same at the 11 cm level. Then I pinned a fold around the skirt and stitched it in place. (I unpicked the facing for the kick pleat first, so I could work with the whole of the fabric flat.)

I stitched round the skirt on the line I had marked. Then I used the overlocker to trim and finish the seam at the same time. You can just catch a glimpse of the seam under the cut away portion in the above picture.

After pressing the seam away from the hem, I then went round and topstitched the seam from the outside.

Here you can see the new "design line" that goes round the skirt! I had to be careful to match the felled vertical seams. I haven't got a photo of the skirt as a whole, since it is hard to photograph the black. But it looks really smart!

I showed another friend who sews, and got the kind of remarks you need when you feel chuffed for accomplishing something well!

And my friend still has a smart black skirt she can wear without embarrassment!