The drama of sewing a woven fabric skirt - needleworkmonday

I’m back and I am back with a bang and a revelation: I cannot sew without a pattern.




Or wait, I will formulate it a bit different: I cannot sew garments I can wear without instantly crying because of their gruesome form and fit, without a real pattern.
Look at these photos and understand:




For a long time now, I dream of a linen midi skirt with pleads or gathers and a buttoned front.


This is a bought skirt I really would like to duplicate

There are several patterns from indi brands that would somehow fit the bill. But they all are not exactly like the skirt in my head. There is for example the Gypsum skirt from sew liberated or its newer sister skirt Estuary. Both skirts have an elastic waistline, which perhaps it super comfy but I fear does not look neat or tailored. Very similar to the Estuary skirt is the Desdemona skirt from sew me something, but it has no elastic in the waist. Additionally, you get a second version of the skirt with inverted pleads instead of the gathers.

Also, I am more interested in a skirt with pleads than a gathered version. I have the A beginner’s guide to making skirts book by Wendy Ward at home and almost forgot about this (because I made a a-line skirt from this book and it did not fit well). But because of the autumnal weather my desire to have this special midi skirt aroused again, I looked into it and saw the Brighton skirt. This is a skirt with pleads and a buttoned front. But – oh sigh – its pleads are on a strange position (look at the photos of the front) and the sewn versions I found on the internet look very strange fit wise.

As you see, there are several pattern options I could buy, but I am afraid that this is ill spent money; that the gathers or pleads do not flatter my figure or that it is too difficult to adapt the pattern to my liking. Therefore I decided to try out a free DIY improvisation pattern for this kind of skirt (the horrible result you already could admire in the first photos).




To be sure, I am to be blamed for the disastrous skirtmonster and not the beautiful website. The explanation was precise and easy to understand, and probable would have worked out better, if I would have used the right amount of fabric…. But no, I wanted to make this wearable muslin from a rescued fabric. I unpicked an old project (a dress that did not fit in the least) and rescued four wide rectangles – or so I thought. In reality two of the ‚rectangles‘ were parts of the former a-line skirt of the dress and therefore no rectangles at all. No problem I thought and preceded with the for me completely new front button band. This went well up to the moment I noticed, that both parts of the skirt were not equally wide…. And that I had sewn one of the button band upsides down, so that the smaller part of the skirt would be at the bottom (oh ohohooooo – it hurts writing this down). But this did not deter me. I found it a good idea to use left over scraps to widen the front parts of the skirt: I sewed on big triangle pieces of fabric and so modified the fronts of the skirt into rectangles (not sure, if you understood what I did… if not, no problem, because id did not work :-DDD).




Now I had two fronts, and a wide back and a waistband – what could go wrong?? Maybe I should have hesitated when I noticed, that back and fronts did not have the same length? Should I have stopped when I could not make even pleads (because the fronts were still not equally wide)? Nooooo, absolutely not. It’s always the best course of action to simply fumble everything together and then sew.

Arghh… please know, I can do things planned and focused, apparently only in sewing or knitting I get carried away and do weirded things, very weird things. So, I may present you my pleated buttoned front skirt, with a button band which is on one front ok, but on the other front on the left side, a skirt which is on the right side shorter than on the left and with pleats which are not all sewn in …
The only viable course of action left was: RIPPPPPPPPINNG




But I was not finished with my creations. If pleats do not work, I concluded, then perhaps gathers would be a fine idea… Thought and done. I unpicked the skirt, eliminated the weird triangle pieces of fabric, layered the false sewn buttoned front as the not visible front, then gathered the fabric and reattached the waistband – wow. Still sh**. I did not think it possible, but now the skirt looks even uglier.




I am unsure which lesson I learned, perhaps:
Never sew skirts in woven fabrics?
Never sew skirts without a bought pattern that is tested to the extremes?
That I do not find gatherers flattering on my frame?
Or that I finally should commit to sewing lessons…..?


Feel free to lie unashamedly in the comments :-DDDD


Thank you @crosheille for initiating and @muscara, @shanibeer, @marblely for hosting the #needleworkmonday. If you want to see more beautiful projects with yarn, fabric and most of all needles, follow @needleworkmonday. Or even better grab your needles and keyboard and join the #needleworkmonday community.