I love Talk-About-Tuesday. I especially love it when I get to talk about nerd-riffic things!

What happens when you cross a nerdy girl with a costumer and then you ask her to speak about Math, of all things, at a local home-school convention? Easy. You end up with a person dressed as Miss Frizzle at your conservative based home-school convention.

I know what you are thinking. That’s one nerdy skirt. What can I say. Where Geek-Gurl Ozma goes, all things nerdy must follow.

It all started in the fall.  I received the assignment to speak for an hour about math. Obviously someone knew my ability to pretty much talk about anything until I either pass out or someone tells me to shut up. Who else would actually be able to talk about math for an hour?

It’s a good thing I also happen to really like math. I maybe have the teeniest tiniest obsession with math. But, you know, it’s not that bad. It’s not like I drive down the street figuring out mileage in my head or anything.

Whatever it takes to be all zen on the roads in NoVA. That’s all I’m saying.

The first thing any sane person would probably attend to is figuring out what to talk about during this hour. Not me. I immediately thought, “Oooh! What will I wear?”

Now that my fashionista friends have totally stopped cheering…

That set me off on a months-long quest for math themed fabric so I could make a skirt. Now let me tell you, this led to me getting rather testy. I found plenty of alphabet fabrics. A plethora of book-inspired fabrics. Math themed? Zilch. Nada. Boo.

Perhaps this is what is wrong with our nation, mathematically speaking. Where’s all the love for math? Maybe if we didn’t spend so much time teaching people to fear math and that math is scary, we’d get further.

Just. An. Idea.

Finally, I found what I needed! A website where you can design your own fabric patterns! No kidding, it’s called Spoonflower. How do you pass up a cool sounding website like that? This led me to this fabric by “Scrummy”. (I love you!!!)

Don’t even ask how much I spent. (Do the math yourselves.)  On a budget of time and finances, I only ordered two yards of fabric, knowing that the circle skirt I really wanted would be nigh on impossible.

I thought I’d use the same pattern as for the first skull skirt, unfortunately it came in a little narrower than I expected and fairly directional. Directional is fine, except when it goes the wrong way.

The good news, I had a desperate need to try a half-circle skirt for another (massive!) project. So I got to work!

Best part – new math equations!

All you do is measure your waist and subtract two inches. Why the subtraction? Just like with a full circle skirt, this puts your fabric on the bias which means your fabric goes a little stretchy. Even if it’s non-stretch. If you are using stretchy fabric like jersey? Well you’re on your own. At least until I try one of those and blog about it. Then you divide by Pi. Which is shown beautifully on the fabric. Do you like that?

Equation: (Waist – 2 inches)/3.14.

You remember what to do from the aforementioned skull skirt link, right? Take your pattern paper and at the corner measure from the corner to make an arc. That’s your waist.  Then take that number and add in your length. In my case, knee-length. Rinse and repeat to make an arc for your hem.

I needed to cut two of these to make a whole skirt. After that it was easy as Pi. Pun absolutely intended!

I stitched up the two sides, threw in a zipper,and added my classic bias tape waist and hem.

Compliments rolled in like candy at the Wonka factory. Sweet!

Oh, and the math talk went well, too.

The ultimate win, I recently wore this skirt to church when I spoke to the congregation and my Bishop came up to me after and complimented on my stylish skirt. He’s a math nerd, too.

–Lady O