Skirt 3.0

At the beginning of making stuff for myself (aka me made with a difference) May I thought I make a pencil skirt. It is in the Sew Everything book, clearly described, what could go wrong. Well, the muslin set of to a bad start when despite numerous tutorials I couldn't figure the invisible zipper out and ended up hand-picking it instead.

Then I tried it on.

It fitted, well, mostly fitted, the darts in the front needed lengthening, the sides needed adjusting, and it was about 10 inches too long, but other then that it was fine. Except ...  I realised that I don't like skirts that sit on the waistline. Thanks to IBS, my stomach can go from flat to 5 months pregnant in 10 min flat, so high-waisted inflexible skirts and pants don't really work for me. I prefer skirts with a yoke that finishes at my belly button. After a search online I found a pattern at Modern Sewing for the aptly named Yoke Skirt. It looked okay and best thing ever, it was free :-)

After a muslin, debating different options for the slits and having a friend show me how to insert an invisible zipper, ta da ...

I was quite pleased with it all. Yes, it needed to be adjusted on the sides and it was far too long, but that was expected and it feels really comfortable. I cut each yoke twice and sewed it like an envelope, because I thought it feels nicer that way.

Even though it's not clear in this picture, I used my overlocking foot for the edges. It quite a nifty little thing. I switched from using the overlocking stitch to just a normal zigzag stitch after some tests, because I prefer it, but either way was an improvement to my previous haphazard ways.

I didn't do the corners as neat as I would have liked, so that is something to be improved on the next skirt. I finished it off by writing a 30 step set of instructions for the next one so I don't forget anything I learnt :-)