Stranger Things Inspired Skirt

July 25, 2019

Less than a week before San Diego Comic-Con, I decided to make a Stranger Things inspired skirt.  It had been on my mind since last October when I attended my “niece’s” Stranger Things themed birthday party.  I ordered a vintage floral bedsheet off of Ebay which was brand new in its original packaging. Unfortunately, due to the packaging I didn’t see that the floral pattern was only along the top edge and not throughout the sheet.  I quickly found 2 more bedsheets, 1 twin size and 1 full size, on Ebay and placed the orders crossing my fingers at least one would arrive in time.

Bedsheets can be great for making skirts and dresses from, especially in this case since I want a vintage style/color/pattern.  I also didn’t have much time before we left for San Diego, and I would be hand-sewing the skirt because I don’t know how to use a sewing machine.  The two sheets arrived a day apart, and though the full size would have been easier to work with cutting wise, the twin size had a better pattern and coloring.  The twin sheet I used was by Room Concepts in the Michele pattern, and it was a “flannelette” 50/50 cotton-polyester blend.  I had four days until we left for San Diego.

I washed both sheets in hot water to remove any sizing and smells they may have from their age, and dried them on high heat as well.  I used a skirt I have to make a rough pattern (I have a pattern packed away somewhere from when I made my Star Wars skirt, but I couldn’t find it) on some butcher paper we have.  I also traced a rough oval using my hand for sizing reference to add pockets to my skirt.  I used this pattern to cut the fabric.  After the fabric was cut, I tea-stained the cut pieces to get the colors a bit older looking and a bit darker.  The sheet had a cream color background, but I wanted it to be a bit more brownish.

I washed the pieces again after tea-staining, and there was an unfortunate amount of fraying along most of the edges, but I cut larger than normal edges in case this happened.  The tea-staining made the fabric more wrinkled than before so I had to iron the pieces prior to painting the alphabet onto the back and front pieces.  I used the Soft fabric paint by Tulip in Ebony and a natural bristle ¾” paint brush I had on hand to paint the letters.  I started with the back section of the skirt in case I screwed it up.  This was done at midnight on the Saturday night before San Diego Comic-Con because we had been at a friend’s birthday party all afternoon/night.  I got up early on Sunday morning to paint the front section of the skirt since the back side was now dry.  We don’t have a lot of space for me to lay both sides to dry where my cat, Nick Furry, can’t get his hair all over it.  I let the paint air dry on its own for about 2 hours, then I used a hair dryer to get the spots which were taking longer to dry due to thicker layers of paint.

While the front side paint was drying I temporarily altered a full-length white petticoat/crinoline I had on hand.  I do have a shorter one, but it’s a dark-ish blue, and I felt that it was too dark to wear under the sheet fabric.  Tea-staining does help with the transparency issue most sheets have, though the flannelette is thicker than most sheets.   I used a lot of safety pins to pull up the outer layer of the petticoat to the waist, then I “hemmed” the underskirt/lining with safety pins from the bottom.  Pinning from the bottom helped give some extra poof, too.

Since I had been thinking about making this skirt since October, I had purchased two small battery operated Christmas lights from Michaels during Christmas time.  They’re the LED and the perfect classic shape, but I wished they had a blinking option.  Sunday, Monday (after work), and Tuesday morning I sewed all of the pieces together, but I hadn’t given enough space to slide the 1” wide elastic for the waist (due to my painting the letters too high), so I had to use some thinner elastic which isn’t as strong.  Like I mentioned before, I don’t know how to sew and an elastic waistband is all I can really do.  The flannelette fabric is also stretchy, and I have no experience working with stretchy fabric

We were leaving for San Diego at 11am on Tuesday so it was crunch time.   I tried on the petticoat and skirt to see if I needed to make further adjustments to the petticoat.  It did need another 2 inches shortened on the interior lining, but the skirt was ready to have the lights pinned to it.  I wanted to have one battery pack in each pocket, so I put the battery pack inside the pocket and safety-pinned the lights going from the battery to the end of the light strand.  I pinned from the under the skirt putting the pin through the two cords which made up the light strand.   I need to get a third strand or maybe one much longer strand of lights to make the skirt better.

I received a lot of compliments on my skirt when I wore it on the first day, Thursday, of Comic Con even though I only had the lights one when I was on the exhibition floor or when I was volunteering in the Hall H line later that evening.  You couldn’t see the lights in the bright sunlight, but they still had a great effect.  Some of the nice comments I didn’t even hear as people would say something to their friends as I passed by them on the Exhibition floor, but my boyfriend was walking behind me and he heard them.  So the moral of the story is to not let your inexperience keep you from trying something.