The Modern Overlapping Circles Skirt
Completed overlapping circles skirt
A few months ago, I traveled to Brussels, Belgium for a conference. (Lucky me.) Walking through the Galeries St Hubert (a very upscale, ornate indoor/outdoor mall), I discovered my new favorite European clothing line. Ok - yes - i admit, I am not familiar with all that many other European clothing lines. But now I have a favorite.
Galeries St Hubert - Brussels, Belgium
Desigual is a Barcelona-based store with locations all over Europe and a few in New York. They carry primarily women’s clothing and accessories in addition to a few additional items for men and children. The word “desigual” literally means “one-of-a-kind,” and I can attest, the store is aptly named.
Desigual, Barcelona
How do I even begin to describe the look and feel of the stuff in this store? Colorful, modern, playful with a lot of embroidery. Frankly, it looked like Barcelona. And I loved it. I tried to subtly take a few pictures in the store and not look like a complete tourist, but as you can see, my photos are pretty terrible.
Inside Desigual, Brussels
My visual documentation of the items I admired at Desigual in Brussels proved to be helpful when whipping up a last minute Christmas gift for my sister-in-law, Joanie. For Christmas gift giving on my husband’s side of the family, we do an exchange involving all the adults and kids. This year I was finally able to rig the name drawing to ensure I would get Joanie. I had purchased a set of pearls for her a few years ago courtesy of my friend who traveled to China for work. But the name exchange never worked in my favor and no one was ever willing to trade. So the pearls and their recipient, Joanie, had to wait until this Christmas when I took matters into my own hands. I suppose it was because the pearls had been sitting in my attic for years and felt a bit like old news, I felt compelled to add a bonus homemade item to Joanie’s Christmas bootie.
Inspiration struck when I was at Old Navy trying to pull together a Christmas Eve look for my daughter. I found a dark denim stretchy pencil skirt that was the perfect blank canvas for some creative experimental embroidery. And huge bonus: it was marked down to $9. Booooyah!
Immediately what came to mind was an abstract circle design I saw embroidered on jeans at Desigual. I knew that I needed to digitize my own version. The design was fairly easy to set up, even when minimizing the jump stitches between the circles. And it stitched out beautifully. After testing out the design and saving it in two different sizes, I stitched out the circles in a staggered, overlapping pattern down the front of the skirt.
Embroidered circles on denim
The resulting skirt was a tough one to give away because O-M-G I love how it turned out. And I think Joanie did as well, because after opening her gift, she gave us an impromptu fashion show.
Joanie in her new skirt.
Shortly after Chrsitmas I went on-line to search for more Desigual inspiration and quickly discovered that I didn’t need to go all the way to Brussels to shop at Desigual. They are on-line and ship to the U.S! And - bonus - it also seemed like the U.S. prices were a bit more reasonable than what I recalled seeing in Brussels! (But I’m not 100% positive about that because I was never confident in my mental currency conversions.) And to top it all off, Desigual was having a great post-holiday sale. How could I NOT order the amazing skirt I had lusted over in the store? I owed it to the store to make a purchase for all the inspiration they provided.
My new skirt from Desigual.
Hot Tip: Consider using triple stitch designs as opposed to big filled areas of embroidery if you are looking to create a big impact without tons of stitching. Too much stitching can distort a garment and make it feel heavy.