Flashback Circle Skirts

[Trynne]

13th Summer, 516AV

“Trynne what are you doing?” came the voice from the other side of the room and the young woman rolled her eyes, before standing up and making her way over to her father, sitting on the floor next to him.

“I was seeing how it fit,” Trynne said almost blankly before she held up her hand to show her father the Bagh Nakh that was in place. It seemed to fit well, with the two loops comfortably slipping over her thumb and little finger. “What are you doing?” she returned the question, tilting her head as she did so.

“I’m making dresses for your sisters, a gift for when they come see us.” the man said and Trynne furrowed her brow. She was fairly certain he still believed they’d come to visit when they’d likely happily moved in with their aunts and uncles and were now likely attending some sort of well-to-do school in Zeltiva, possibly even at the university for the older of her siblings.

Sighing she shook her head, then looked at her fathers work, seeing him working on the hem of the skirt.
“If I help with the hem, will you teach me how to get the right measurements and how to make the skirt part?” Trynne asked and she saw her father start to smile before he nodded.

Hurriedly Trynne slipped the Bagh Nakh from her fingers, making sure to be careful of the blades of the weapon, before allowing it to clatter to the floor of the rather dismal room that they called home.

“So, to get the measurements aye? Well, you want a skirt to fit over your hips right? Or the widest part of you, so you need to measure that.” her father explained and Trynne nodded, before standing up.

”Show me!” she demanded and her father chuckled, standing up with his tape measure and placing it around her hips, and reading the number off the front, taking some time to write the number down.

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[Trynne]

”Just under thirty-four inches,” he said nodding and Trynne grinned. ”But that's just how big we want it to be at the end. If we leave it with that measurement, then after we hem everything, it’ll be too big, so we’ll work with your waist measurement, understand?” Adim asked and Trynne nodded with an even wider grin as her father took her waist measurement, pulling the tape so it was snug around her waist, but not so that it was tight. ”Thirty inches exactly.”

Trynne watched as the man wrote down the second number and then started calculating something and resulting in a smaller number.

”What’s that for Dad?” Trynne asked and her father looked back at her.

”Well, this type of skirt we use a quarter circle as a pattern. We call it a ’circle skirt’ and this number is how far from the corner we need the waist cuts to be.” her father said before sitting down and patting the floor next to him, his book of calculations in front to him. ”So, it's been a lot of trial and error, but for this measurement, we need to divide it by six. So, if you hold your hands up, I need you to count to thirty and every sixth number you tell me.”

Trynne did as she was told, holding her fingers out in front of for and beginning to count, putting one finger up with each number until her sixth finger was up.
”This is the sixth number,” she explained and her father nodded, making a mark in his book before Trynne continued on, the next time she stopped when she reached twelve and then continuing on until she was at thirty.

”Good, so you've reached thirty. Here I've made a mark for every sixth number you reached, so can you count them for me?” her father asked and Trynne leant over, her fingers touching each small line as she counted them in her head.

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[Trynne]

“Fi-wait no...” she mumbled at first and furrowed her brows as she counted them a second and then a third time just to be sure before she nodded. “Yeah it’s five, right?” she asked, turning her grey eyes to her father to see him nod and the grin on her face grew.

“Exactly, so now we know the inner skirt measurement. The only other measurement we need now, is how long you want the skirt to be.” her father held the measuring tape to Trynne’s waist and then measured down the side of her leg. “For this, always make sure you have your measuring tape from where you want the skirt to sit.” her father said out loud before standing up and smiling. “Down to your knees it’s around twelve inches, but for the hem we need a bit extra, so we’ll write down fifteen inches.”

“Okay! But how do you know my sisters? They aren’t here to measure?” Trynne asked, blinking at her father.

“Well it hasn’t been that long so they can’t have grown that much, but it’s all guesswork really.” the man sighed and Trynne reached out to put a hand on his shoulder. “But I’m making them quite big, but I think I’ve found a way that they can be altered daily, with a string hidden in the waistband that can be tied tighter.”
“How would you get that in?” Trynne asked and her father just rolled his eyes and started drawing a rough sketch in his book.

“For a simple skirt, you’d fold fabric into a quarter and then cut out a pattern like this.” he showed her to drawing, with two quarter circles on a square. “This smaller one is the first measurement away from the corner, so in your case it’s five inches. The bigger one is the second measurement added to the first, so twenty inches in your case.”

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[Trynne]

Trynne nodded as she listened to her father, though her face showed confusing and her father grinned, pulling out some of his fabric and folding it into a quarter, laying it on the floor.

“This is for your sister, so the first measurement is going to be eight inches.” He held the tape measure at the corner and pulled it tight, pivoting it around the corner and making regular marks with a small piece of chalk at eight inches until the quarter circle started to form. “See, that’s how we get the circle. Can you hold the corner?”

Trynne nodded then carefully placed her finger on where the tape hit the corner after her father instructed her, then she watched him repeat the steps for a larger measurement.

“From here, all we do is cut those out and hem them. This will be the bottom, so you don’t need a big hem. The smaller one needs a hem big enough to fit a drawstring in, and a hem big enough to make it so you can fit it over your, or your clients, hips.” Adim explained and a grin spread on Trynne’s face.

“Wouldn’t it look neater to make a waistband?” she asked and her father nodded.
“It would, but it’d take more work and more fabric, and I don’t quite have enough money for that extra fabric, so this is the quicker and cheaper way.” Adim said calmly. “When you’re older and you have all that money, it’s always best to add a waistband, and then you can add buttons instead of a drawstring, and that would look a lot neater.” Adim smiled softly before he reached for his scissors and his pins. “For now though, how about you help me pin this together so it doesn’t move while I’m cutting it?” Adim asked and Trynne grinned and nodded.

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[Trynne]

She took one of the pins and pushed it into what would become the scrap fabric, making sure that it went through all four layers, then once she was sure that the first pin was in place, she took the others and kept them lined up next to the chalk mark so that the material would stay in it’s place.

“Done!” Trynne exclaimed fairly loudly and her father laughed slightly, before looking over the fabric and then raising his scissors, carefully cutting along the chalk lines and smiling as he saw the pins holding everything together.

“Good work Trynne, looks like it’s holding together well today.” Adim said, his eyes not leaving the fabric as he carefully continued until the cast off fabric had been fully removed.
The man smiled softly as he unfolded the fabric and took a hold of the smaller circle that had been formed in the centre of the fabric and standing up with it so that it hung down in the shape of a simple skirt.

“It looks like a skirt? But it’s really messy?” Trynne questioned and her father nodded slightly.

“I know, but we still have to hem it and it’ll look much neater. The bottom will be a normal hem, while the waist we’ll give a thicker hem so we can fit a drawstring in there”. Adim explained and Trynne nodded slightly, a blank expression on her face before her father chuckled and lay the ‘skirt’ down again.

Carefully her grabbed a short piece of string for his demonstration, then folded the inner edge of the skirt over the string.

“We have to make sure that the string fits in the hem, and then once it’s sewn parts of the string will hang loose on the inside so we can tighten and loosen how it fits on the waist.” Adim explained and Trynne nodded again, understanding what he meant a bit more, before she looked up at her father again. “Shall we go eat before that though?” Adim asked and Trynne nodded vigorously, noticing the warm yet empty smile that spread across his face.

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[Kynier]

Grades!

Skill Rewards

• Mathematics +1
• Observation +2
• Sewing +1
• Socialization +2

Lores Learned

• Mathematics: Using addition to perform division
• Sewing: Taking Circle Skirt measurements
• Sewing: Making a waistband takes more material, which costs more

Other Notes
Post Length: Every post was short and this was why you did not receive many Experience Points. The standard goal is to try and reach 500 words per post. Being a little under 500 words is fine, but when your longest post is 352 words you should not expect to receive a lot of experience.

If you have any questions or concerns about your grade please feel free to PM me.