I played baseball with my brother in the backyard as often as he would agree to play with a girl. This would only be when I could catch him between Atari, playing army with Steve Beck up the street, his daily ingestion of $1.49 Totino's frozen pizza, and better offers to do more fun things with cooler kids. I was tomboyish, but not a typical tomboy. I liked playing with the boys best because they seemed to argue less, but I also liked figuring out things that were pretty too, like fancy barbie clothes and flower doodles on my math folder. It took me a while to dress like a girl though. Most of it seemed a fuss, got in the way of doing more important things like catching pop flies. (If you're here for anything of value, please skip down to the last part of this post, I'll turn my back.)
It took me a while to figure this all out. Girlness. And clothes. And how girls wore clothes. And what seemed most important was that if I was going to do that, I didn't want to do it like any other girl. I have vivid evidence of this stored in my brain. My mom might remember this. (I'm hoping my brother doesn't, or he'll never play catch with me again.) One night as I lay in bed scheming of how I would talk George into playing catch the next day, I also schemed a better way to wear a skirt.
I had a short, flouncy skirt that cinched in at the waist. I did not like anything that was tight around my tummy (nor wool, nor collars, nor highwaisted pants). So I decided that I could wear the skirt like a poncho, waistline around my neck, with jeans, the flow of the skirt leaving me plenty of room to catch and throw a baseball. I even got up out of bed, closed the door, turned on my light, dug my skirt out of the pile on my closet floor and held it up to my neck to see if it would be long enough to meet my jeans. Perfect. Lights out, back to bed. Dreams that even George would think its cool.
"What are you wearing!?" said he.
"Shut up, lets go throw." said I.
.
.
.
"Anna Maria Demacopoulos, what on earth are you wearing?!" from the lady in the kitchen window. And it was back to tshirts. Eventually I figured a few things out.
For one, I figured out this new skirt, that has a very uncanny resemblance to my childhood neck skirt. But. You should wear it like this. At your waist. (It also looks great sitting low on the waist, across the hips.)
Then glance towards the glow of the window, offer a demure smile, and no one will need to be convinced that you are both a girl and know just exactly how to be. Despite the time and fashion hiccups it took to get there.
Here's your link to the Flirting the Issue Skirt pdf. This is the same skirt design that you've seen here and here.
I've organized all my free patterns onto a new page called "make" at the website so that they are no longer polluting my sidebar here. That felt good!
And yes, we made some kits too. I think this would be the perfect Valentines Date skirt.
(don't forget your baseball mitt!)
xo, Anna