Perfect Pencil Skirt Part 2

It’s been a couple weeks.  I had a 3 orders to complete, a couple coats to finish(I sew patches on letterman’s jackets), and 2 hat ideas came to mind.  So I’m back to working on something for me. 
I finished my muslin, and took the brave step of trying it on.
My hips are not as curvy as the pattern, which created these weard sunk in dimples on the sides.  And the back darts didn’t seem to be long enough, which caused a weird bubble over my butt.  Being that I’m only 5’ tall, it’s obviously too long.

I decided to tackle one issue at a time and started with the back darts, figuring that might also remove some of the excess in the hip area too.  I turned the skirt inside out and pinned out the ease in the darts and lengthened  them. 

After taking the skirt off, I then marked the end points of the darts, and redrew  new darts in red so I could distinguish the new lines from the old.  Then basted the darts with black thread and put the skirt back on to deal with the hips.

I to be honest, I think part of the hip issue was my underwear.  I marked the adjustment seam the same way I did the darts.


The hips didn’t need much of an adjustment, but they look much better now.  I shortened the skirt 3 inches.  I thought the bottom of the skirt was too wide for me, so I narrowed it by 1/2 on both sides.

I rethread traced the new seam lines.

I decided to use the original cutting lines, and just trace the new seamlines onto the fashion fabric.

I moved the slit up 3 inches and redrew the front slit directly onto the fabric using tailor's chalk.

I bought some stretch bengaline from Joann’s.  When I got it home I reakized the stretch went with the lengthwise grain.  Since I didn’t want my skirt to grow in length as I wore it, I decided to try a usual no-no.  I cut the pieces out on the crosswise grain of the fabric.  We shall see how this works out.