Pink clay

Please forgive a rather frivolous sewing post in the midst of all that is happening in the world right now.  I find I do not have the words to address the pain and terrible things, but my heart is deeply grieved for all those who are hurting.  I am minded that all I can do is to tend the garden of my own heart, to continue weed out the evil that would root there.

 

So.  Another skirt.  This is the skirt I made first, before the teal and flame ones of my previous post.  I wouldn't call it a palette-cleanser exactly, more like a warm-up lap.  The fabric is 100% linen from fabrics-store.com in English Rose, which is a lovely pink-clay sort of color that was difficult to photograph accurately.  It is a bit more muted than in the photographs.  Before this month, I hadn't sewn a full garment since the fall, and I wanted something that I didn't need to think too much about, since these days I am sewing with utter distraction, in stolen snatches of time, surrounded by the demands and needs of my children all day, every day. 

I started with the Everyday Skirt pattern, which I've made enough times at this point to not think about it much, but I wanted to see if I could take the sweep of it down a bit with some gentle tweaks. 
This pattern runs quite big, and I also have wondered if it was time to size down again.  The first time I made this pattern, I made a size large, based on my body measurements, but it was too big, so I've been sewing a straight size medium with an inch of added length since then. 

The grade between sizes on this pattern isn't very much on some pattern pieces, and is 1/2" all around on others, so I decided to leave the back piece alone, since I carry a lot of my weight in my seat, and to take the side panels down to the XS size and the front panel to the S size.  (I should add, just for the record, that I can never wear these sizes on the bottom in ready to wear, ever.  Just to give you a sense of the sizing on this pattern). 

I made the pattern with my usual modification for a 1" waistband, and used two lines of 3/8" elastic to make the back waist width line up with the front (I've handled the width discrepancy between the front and back waistbands in different ways since making this modification, and I think I like this one the best).

I think I cut the elastics to 11.5."  I tried it on, and did not like the fit at all.  The sweep of the skirt still felt too big, and the fit around the waist was just off somehow.  It felt too long, too big, just Too Much Skirt.  In the meantime, I had made the teal skirt and liked the sweep, so decided to use that as a guide to take off some width to this skirt. 

This is probably closest to the color.

(I should add: I think I may have cut this one at pattern length instead of adding my usual inch, and then doing a 1" hem.  This is one of the challenges of my proportions: long rise, long femur, itty-bitty shin bones.  My height is all between my natural waist and knees--ha!  The trouble with that is, if I make a skirt to industry-standard "knee" length--21" say, it tends to hit me at mid-thigh.  But if I add too much length to get below-the-knee in a non-pencil silhouette--say, 25-26"--I quickly end up in frumpy-town because the length plus short calves means the visual proportions are off.  24" is often a good right-at-the-knee length, but it doesn't always look good for one reason or another. Tricky, that). 

 

At first, I thought I'd have to totally deconstruct the skirt, and maybe even recut parts of it, but in the end, pinning out a wedge from each side panel was enough.  I measured the width of the teal skirt (48" all around), and then measured this skirt (around 62", I think) and decided the best place to take out the width was the side panels, since that was where most of the A-shape comes from.

I needed the waist measurement to stay roughly the same, however, so the width needed to come out in a wedge rather than just trimming the seam allowance down.  In a way, it was an easier alteration since I didn't have to unpick the waistband. 

I unpicked the hem for a few inches to either side of the seam allowance and measured out a 2" wedge on the fold along the seam allowance, and tapered it to nothing, ending at the waistband seam.  That way when I sewed along the new seam line, the old seam allowance was captured inside the wedge.  The finished sweep is one I'm happy with, and taking out that wedge fixed whatever was going on with the waistband fit, so there you go. 

An outtake!  Photos by Birdie today.

I'm not sure I would make a skirt on this pattern on purpose in the future, given that I like the Rose hack and it is slightly fewer pieces to sew, but there are some nice features about this pattern that I could see making it again with the narrower side panel, or altering older makes to mimic this one.  And I think that's my skirt sewing mostly sorted for the summer.  I have a dress hack that I think is going to work well, so will show that soon too.