Made by a Fabricista: Sewing and Skating

Along with many people it seems, I've picked up roller skating during this time of social distancing and staying at home. A girl can never have to many hobbies, right? Like many other 80s babies I spent a ton of time at the rink as a kid and had some roller blades in the 90s. I even worked for a little while as a Sonic carhop and skated orders out to customers. During college I borrowed a friends rollerblades and bladed around campus. I always really loved skating so when the gyms were closed and I wanted an activity that would get me moving and outdoors I figured why not skate? It's so much more fun that just walking and I HATE running.

Well the next step was definitely to blend my two hobbies and since controlling a foot pedal in skates doesn't seem practical, skating in me made outfits was the obvious way to go. I knew I wanted a cute pair of retro shorts and a matching top.

I chose this black and white interlock fabric to make the set. The black has sold out, but green and white are available here. Interlock is a weird knit to me. It's medium weight like a ponte, but without the recovery. I felt like this style of retro gym shorts are typically made with interlock, but if I had to make it again I'd go with a ponte instead.

For the top I used the recently released Studio Calicot Liv tank. This is a great staple racerback tank! It used just under a yard of fabric, even for the largest size, making it a great scrap buster. I opted to add the white neck and armbands for the retro contrast. This is really a quick satisfying sew. So many options! I could see this extended into a dress.

It's really all about the shorts! I used Purl Soho City Shorts pattern because they have the exact retro shorts look I wanted. These shorts were designed to be sewn out of a woven, but because this knit doesn't have a great amount of stretch I was able to achieve a good fit by going a size down. Bias tape is called for for the trim along the hem of the shorts, but since I used a knit fabric simply cut 2" strips by the width of the fabric. To attach the trim I sew the strips to the hem using a 1/2" seam allowance then folded the strip over to enclose the raw edge and to the wrong side of the fabric and topstitched it in place