Pretty much as soon as Emily from In The Folds announced she had designed another free pattern for Peppermint magazine, I hit Download.
It is a vintage inspired skirt, featuring knife pleats and big pockets. Love at first sight.
Here is a little embarrassing fact: I had yet to successfully sew a skirt for myself in a woven fabric. At least one that I was willing to wear in public.
My failed attempts all revolve around the fact that I can't seem to get the skirts to fit properly around my lower waist, in order to hide my pear shape rather than accentuate it.
Not willing to admit defeat just yet, I wanted to give this design a chance. At least it comes with a shaped waist band, so that was a good start.
However this skirt is designed to sit on your waist which is not ideal for me. Most of my ready to wear skirts sit on my hips.
So I decided to "cheat" and to make it one size too big, a size D.
I picked a denim from Art Gallery Fabrics, it's light-weight and drapes beautifully.
The skirt was pretty easy to make. Although I did manage to fold the knife pleats on the back the wrong way, even though a little voice inside my head was telling me I was doing it wrong! I ignored it and paid the price when I realised I couldn't sew the zipper on. Lots of unpicking became my punishment but it was totally worth it.
I didn't use the hem facing and just hemmed it the conventional way.
The result?
The skirt sits on my hip indeed. But to be honest, it is too big, and I should have trusted the designer.
But now I had a skirt that could give me a really good indication of what it would look like on me in a smaller size, sitting in my actual waist.
So I decided to make another one straight away. This time in size C, the size I was supposed to make. Same material, just a different colour: a blue denim.
Et voila! A perfect fitting skirt at last. I'm pretty sure this one will be worn in public many times!
Since I didn't use the hem facing, and kept the length just above the knee I managed to make this skirt with just 1.5m of fabric.
If you haven't yet, you can download this pattern here.
