Completed Stitching Skirts

[Trynne]

89 Summer, 519AV

It was fairly early in the morning and the fog was already trying its hardest to obscure her vision as Trynne made her way through the streets of Sunberth, her head down and everything of worth having been left behind at home so that she didn’t draw any more attention to herself. If she left everything at home, there was nothing that could draw people towards her. As she turned a few more corners, she glanced behind her, seeing the shadow of someone that seemed to be following her and for a moment she felt herself panic slightly. She inhaled carefully, picking up her pace and trying to listen out for footsteps other than her own, though they were muffled and distorted, and she couldn’t tell if they were getting closer or not.
Still, she sped up her walking pace again and tensed up, wishing that she’d brought her Bagh Nakh with her. She knew it was a bad idea walking in the fog without any form of weapon to defend herself, and she wished that she had chosen to bring it with her.
The footsteps were louder now, and she clenched her fists, hoping that whoever it was would be scared away if she lashed out enough, and as the footsteps got louder and louder she kept her eyes ahead until she noticed the figure walking past her, almost completely ignoring her as they kept their own eyes straight ahead.
Shaking her head, Trynne sighed in relief and allowed herself to slow down again, watching the figure as they turned to walk down another alleyway and Trynne turned her head to look down the alleyway as she walked past it, not seeing any signs of the other person.
It wasn’t long until she was outside Deu’s Vestements and thankful that nothing had happened on her way to work, she entered the building, quickly moving through to a table that had a shelf next to it that had a series of fabrics stacked upon it.
“Morning.” she called out to the owner of the shop and the man quickly appeared.
“Good morning.” He said and his voice seemed to be distant as he spoke. “We’re running low on skirts. Can you make some?” he asked and Trynne smiled, looking up at him.
“Of course, any particular measurements or fabrics?” she asked, and then she watched as Deu shook his head, making his way back to where he had been, and Trynne smiled slightly.
She turned to a shelf of fabrics, running her fingers over them until she found a dark red linen that looked as though it would be a good colour for Sunberth. Any blood would likely not show on the fabric after all.
Thinking to herself, she decided that she wanted the waist to be about thirty-six inches, and so she needed to work out how she would cut the fabric. She wanted to make a circle skirt, and from what her father had told her, she knew that that measurement would have to be divided by six.
She held up the fingers of her left hand and counted along each one, then when she ran out of fingers she counted the number six and held up a finger on her left hand, then started counting on her fingers again with the first finger being number seven.

Word Count559

[Trynne]

Next she continued on as such, raising another finger on her right hand every time she’d counted six numbers until she reached the thirtieth number.
“If there’s six number between thirty and thirty-six then that’s another.” she went quiet to check the five fingers now held up on her right hand and added an additional one to it. “So six inches to be cut?” she nodded to herself again.
“But how long?” she’d noticed that she seemed to be a fairly standard height for women in sunberth and now she grabbed the tape measured and held by her waist, lowering it down until it was midway down her calf and then noted the number at her waist. “Twenty-nine inches…” she mumbled to herself.
“So… That’ll be six and twenty-nine inches, doubled… Thirty-five… Seventy?” she mumbled to herself as she worked out the length of the fabric that she’d need.
She took hold of the red fabric, unrolling some of it and measuring the width of the fabric to see that it was just over seventy inches in width. Next she measured the length until it was seventy-four inches long, before carefully cutting the fabric at that point.
Now she folded the fabric until it was quartered, and then she lay the folded fabric onto the table. She picked up a small piece of chalk, then held the measuring tape at the corner that would be the centre of the fabric when it was unfolded. Carefully she held it in place, running her other hand along the tape measure and the fold of the fabric until she’d find where it would be six inches from the centre and carefully she marked it with the chalk.
Holding the end of the tape measure in place, she moved the measuring end along slightly and then marking again where it was six inches from the centre and then continuing on until a number of chalk marks had been made along the fabric, marking out a quarter of a circle. Seeing that, she drew in the rest of the marks to make a smooth line.
Now was the time to mark the length of the skirt. She repeated the same steps as before, this time measuring out thirty-five inches instead of the six inches that she had been measuring out. She continued on until the bottom of the skirt had been marked out, then she joined the marks up to make a quarter circle.
Humming softly to herself, Trynne glanced around the space she was working in and took hold of a few pins, pushing them through each layer of fabric on the chalk lines to hold them into place alongside the quarter circle line she had made.
Smiling and still humming to herself, Trynne picked up a pair of scissors and looked over them, before bringing them to the fabric. She cut on what would have been the waste fabric, about an inch away from the line that she had drawn to allow space for hemming. She took her time, not wanting to mess up, and then once she had completed the waist area, she repeated the same steps on what would have been the bottom edge of the skirt.

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[Trynne]

Once completed she removed the pins from the fabric and unfolded the fabric to see a circular piece of fabric with a circle cut from the middle. She looked over it for a moment or two, before she picked it by placing her thumb and finger so that they pinched the fabric on each side of the smaller hole, holding it up and seeing the skirt take form and a grin spread across her face, happy with her work so far. Now she had to hem each end of the skirt, and see about threading a string through the hem at the waist of the skirt to allow for the wearer to adjust the waist of the skirt so that it would fit them better without making it too difficult to get on.
Not wanting to risk messing up the stitches at the top of the skirt, Trynne decided to look first at the bottom of the skirt. She checked the fabric and decided which side would be the outside of the skirt, and turned it inside out before laying the skirt back down on the surface so that what would be the inside of the skirt was facing her. Carefully she smoothed the fabric down, making sure that what would become the bottom hemline of the skirt was closest to her.
Next she folded the bottom of the skirt up around a quarter of an inch up and pushed a pin through the two layers of fabric to hold it in place. She moved along around three inches, and made sure the fabric was rolled up around an inch before pushing another pin through the fabric. She continued on around the diameter of the skirt until she ran out of pins.
Looking at the skirt, she’d only managed to pin half of the skirt hem and Trynne couldn’t help but frown as she pondered how to deal with only having half of the skirt pinned.
“Maybe if I…” she mumbled to herself, the sound of her employer's footsteps briefly distracting her train of thought before an idea came to her mind, and she grinned widely, nodding to herself.
Carefully she picked out a needle and a thread that seemed to almost match the colour of the linen and measured the thread against the skirt so it was about three times the length of what she would be sewing. Carefully she threaded the needle and tied a double knot into the very end of the fabric.
She knew that the stitches would be visible on the outside of the skirt, so she knew she would have to be careful and make sure that the stitches were neat and lined up properly. Other the skirt likely wouldn’t be worth much at all.
Exhaling softly, Trynne nodded to herself and pushed the needle through the fabric in between the first two pins. She moved the needle an eighth of an inch back towards the first pin and brought it back up through the fabric. She moved it towards the second pin and pushed the needle back down through the fabric an eighth of an inch passed the end of the first stitch, making sure to keep it the same distance from the hemmed edge of the skirt, then returned the needle to the end of the previous stitch, pulling it back up through the fabric.

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[Trynne]

She checked over the two stitches quickly, making sure to pull the threads tight enough that were strong, but not so strong as to bunch up the fabric, before continuing along the skirt, hemming it and doing what she could to keep her stitches neat.
It wasn’t too long before she got to the third pin that she’d pushed into the fabric, and she briefly stopped stitching to pull out the second pin, though she left the first pin in place to make sure that the stitches there didn’t end up being pulled about before she got her stitches in at the other side of the pin.
She continued stitching around, briefly stopping at each pin she reached in order to pull out the previous pin until almost half of the skirt had been hemmed.
She stopped for a few moments then in order to change how the skirt was smoothed out, moving so that more of the unstitched hem was visible with about two inches of the stitches having been left visible.
Carefully she began folding the hem into place again, using the pins she’d taken out of the skirt to hold the hem in place ready for her to stitch it into place. Then she picked up her needle and thread to continue on with her stitches.
She carried on as she had been, making the stitches to a pin and then removing the pin before it ready to carry on making more and more stitches around the hem to hold it in place and prevent it from fraying noticeably.
She continued on until she came close to the last pin. At this point there was only around four inches until her stitches met the point where she’d started stitching. She adjusted the skirt again, taking a few chimes to fold up the hem and pin it into the place before she continued the stitches along for the last few inches.
Once the stitches met the starting point, she continued them along for around an inch, stitching over the already existing stitches to make sure that they were anchored in place.
When she was confident that the stitches were strong enough and wouldn’t just tear apart, she tied the thread off, looping it around a few of the inside stitches to tie it into place, then cut the thread off.
Happy with the bottom hem, Trynne picked the skirt up again and held it up to check it up as she thought of how to do the waist.
“Looks good so far!” came the voice and Trynne jumped slightly, having been too engrossed in her work to her the man approaching. “Are you going to add a drawstring to the waist? It would probably look better with braces to hold it up instead.” the man said and Trynne nodded.
“I was thinking of the drawstring method but if you think braces would be better I can make it without the drawstring?” she said calmly, watching the man.
“Yes that way would be best.” he said before getting back to manning the rest of the shop.

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[Trynne]

Trynne was both relieved and disappointed. She hadn’t really sewn a drawstring into a waistband before so she was glad that she wouldn’t have chance to mess it up, but she found it a shame that she’d have to wait until another time to be able to practice them. Instead, Trynne would just be hemming waist of the skirt.
Thinking to herself, she removed the last pin from the bottom of the skirt and folded down the waistband half an inch, making sure that the half inch of extra fabric was inside the skirt. Then she took hold of a pin, pushing it through the fabric to hold it into place.
The waist opening on the skirt was much shorter than the bottom hem, and she pushed a pin into the fabric at every inch, making sure that the hem was even and neat. She had just enough pins to hold the entire hem into place, and soon she was remeasuring a piece of the thread to be around three times the diameter of the waist opening.
She threaded the needle, and tied another double knot at the end of the thread, before beginning to stitch around the waistband. She kept the first pin in place again, and then once she’d reached the third pin with her stitches, she removed the second pin.
Every so often she’d take a break from making the stitches to pull the stitches tight and keep them flat against the fabric and to make them look neater. It took her around ten chimes to hem the waist opening, and once she was completed with the full hem, she continued the stitches for around an inch and a half over the start of the stitches just to ensure that they were strong enough.
Next she tucked the needle through the stitches and looped it back on the thread, tying the thread off before repeating the process again. Finally she cut the excess thread off and set the needle and pins back into their place.
Humming to herself, she picked up the skirt inspecting the stitching and smiling, happy that it seemed to be strong enough, even if it was a fairly simple stitch.
“Deu, where do you want me to put this now?” she called out, hearing the sound of footsteps approaching again as the man appeared, taking the skirt from her and checking it over, nodding as he did so.
“This should be good. Can you make more? Some bigger and some smaller?” he asked and Trynne nodded, though before she could speak, Deu was disappearing off somewhere, before he returned with another roll of fabric. “Maybe a few in this fabric?” he suggested.
“Of course!” Trynne nodded happily, taking the fabric as he offered it before she began to make a second skirt.

Word Count469
Total: 2644

[Kreig Messer]

Grade :

{Name}

Experience

Skill	XP Earned
Sewing	+4
Observation	+2
Mathematics	+2
Organization	+1

Lore

Sewing: Making a circle skirt.

Notes :

Another thorough one my goodness, again I'v awarded XP where I saw fit and related lore. If you've any questions please PM me or contact me on discord.

Credit goes to Trickster for this lovely Template

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