Despite finding that lovely Liberty fabric last week and wanting to make the dress, I have stuck it out and made a skirt. I used Winnie’s Tailored Skirt block. When I drafted the block I was aware that the hip curve might be a little poofy – something that Winnie’s skirts tend to do on some people. I made a note to check this when I did the fitting.
The block actually fits well, apart from the poofy bit on the side. The side seams hang perpendicular to the floor, there is no pulling and no baggy bit at the back. All I needed to do was to adjust the hipline curve where I pinned on the toile.
Once the adjustment was marked on the pattern I started the adaptation for a 12 gore skirt. I had decided to make a skater skirt without a gathered waist. I wanted something fitted to the hip and flaring out gently. I divided the front and back along the hipline into 3 and moved the darts on the back to line up with the panel lines, the darts were made a little bigger and to compensate for this I moved the side seam out from the hip to the waist by 1cm. I did the same on the front and added a 2nd dart to go onto the 2nd panel. I marked the grainlines on the centre of each piece, labeled them and cut them up. I added 4cm flare to the hemline of each piece, on each side, tapering to a point 14cm below the waist on the panel seam. I am not going to have a separate waistband, but will draft a facing. The zip will go in the centre back seam.
The toile of the skirt fits really well, I love the line of the flare. I have 2 different fabrics to make this in, one a lightweight beige linen with a white pinstripe, and the other a retro print cotton sateen. It will be interesting to see how different the skirt looks with these two different fabrics.
THE COMPULSIVE SEAMSTRESS 