A tragic thing happened with my last post – none of my text and photos published and vanished from my history. I have no idea what went wrong but I shall rewrite it, even though it’s never as good the second time!
This outfit is made from the Marimekko print known as “Unikko”. This is an iconic poppy print which was first released in 1964 by the Marimekko designer Maija Isola who disobeyed the founder of the company, Armi Ratia’s, orders that there would never be a flower print released by Marimekko! Maija went on to release a whole series of flower prints. I bought the large Unikko print in Stockholm in 2014, which was the fiftieth anniversary of the fabric. I remember buying this print back in 1974 when I used it to make kitchen blinds for my new house. Anyway, I only bought a tiny remnant, thinking that it would be good for something! Then I found the small poppies in the Marimekko shop in Vancouver and serious planning began!
I initially planned to make a dress combining the two fabrics, but found that I either didn’t have enough fabric or had too much. I couldn’t waste any of it!
After the success of my Flint shorts, I thought I might make a kind of adult romper, but in two parts – shorts and top. I didn’t have enough of the large poppies for the shorts and thought it would be weird if I made them from the small poppies and the top from the large. So, what to do? Then I hit on the idea of turning the Flint shorts into a skirt. I loved the pocket opening and thought it would be an interesting experiment. I didn’t know whether the front tucks would be strange in a skirt so thought I’d better do a toile, which duly proved to be successful, so I summoned my courage and cut the skirt out.
I then needed a shortish top from the small Unikko pattern. I settled on the Lotta Jansdotter Esme tunic, cutting it to the shortest length. It was too short (of course) so I added a bottom band and threaded some elastic through to pull it in a bit closer to my body.
The photo of the back makes the hem look a bit uneven but this is caused by me jamming my hands into the pockets.
I didn’t have enough of the large poppies to get the pockets cut out, so I used the small poppies.
You will have to play “spot the pocket” to see what it looks like, but I think it works pretty well. I secured the bottom of the pocket with a satin stitch arrowhead.
I found more of this fabric at an op shop in the form of a cushion, which I bought for a dollar. It was brand new with a $60 price tag, so I was pretty happy. I can now coordinate perfectly with my home decor!
I wore the outfit to a meeting and ran into Vanessa from https://www.instagram.com/theothermissv/ It’s so nice to catch up with new sewing friends in the street and we had a quick chat about the outfit.
We then paid a flying visit to our holiday place and I felt very overdressed strolling around in the bush in my Marimekko outfit.
It’s a wonderful time of the year and the bush is ablaze with blooms.
So. If you want to create your very own Flint skirt, all you need to do is to take the front and back pattern pieces and draw a straight line down the centre seamlines to where you want the hem. I chose to make my skirt slightly A-line, but you could also turn this into a pencil skirt. Those new centre lines then go on the fold. The advantage of this for my skirt is that I didn’t break up the big print.
In email correspondence with my friend Hélène I discovered that she had also, and quite independently, hacked the Flint shorts into a skirt, so it seems as though the collective consciousness has been at work. [later update: it transpired that this last bit of information was completely incorrect! Hélène actually published her lovely Flint hack onto Instagram whereupon I immediately said I was going to copy it. This must have gone into my subconscious and, of course, I have copied her!]