Tag: pencil skirt

The Barcode Skirt

This is one of those projects that was so simple to sew it hardly seems to warrant a blog post of its own, but hey, it’s my blog and if I want to blog the super-easy makes as well as the complicated ones, I absolutely can. And I seriously love this skirt, so there’s that 😛

Also, I’ve been meaning to blog every week and clearly that didn’t happen last week. I’m not going to apologise because I don’t believe in feeling guilt for no good reason, but I felt like I owe an explanation. Life has been busy and time got away from me, plus I’ve been sewing rather than writing about it–oh, the pressure of an impending holiday deadline! You’ll get two blog posts from me this week, though, as I’ve got one scheduled to go live on the Sewcialists blog tomorrow. I’ll post a link here when it does 🙂

Anyway, on with the sewing stuff…

Striped Gertie Skirtie 4

 

In a Nutshell:

A knit pencil skirt that fills a gap in my wardrobe I didn’t even realise was there! Continue reading “The Barcode Skirt”

The Gertie Skirtie

It might have taken me a long time to get around to making anything from the book Gertie Sews Vintage Casual, but since the success of the Knit Sweetheart Top I haven’t been able to stop! This is my second project from the book. Read on to find out if I like it as much as the first…

Gertie Skirtie00008

In a Nutshell:

A basic but incredibly useful pattern. Wish I’d paid a bit more attention to my fabric, though!

Pattern:

The Easy Knit Pencil Skirt from Gertie Sews Vintage Casual. It’s a simple pencil skirt with an elasticated waist and all the shaping in the side seams. I cut a size 6, grading to an 8 at the waist as my measurements indicated. Continue reading “The Gertie Skirtie”

Pencil skirts galore!

My quest to find the perfectly fitted knit fabric pencil skirt…

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Skirt #2, complete with boots that really don’t go with the rest of the outfit. Ah well. Them’s the breaks when you don’t have a full length mirror by the front door.

This post is a tale of two skirts, in my quest to get a perfectly fitted and comfortable knit pencil skirt. A pencil skirt might not seem all that practical when looking after a toddler, but I much prefer a straight or pegged style to a full skirt. And provided it’s short and stretchy enough, with thick tights or leggings underneath it can be a really versatile item of clothing perfectly suited to getting down on the floor and playing.

The first version I made was using some plain black ponte from Minerva. I used the free pattern at So Sew Easy as I liked the look of the four panels and topstitched seam lines, although I knew these wouldn’t be so obvious in just black.

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It was a qualified success. I loved how easy it was to sew and think I did a really good job on the topstitching and twin needle hemming, but it really didn’t fit well as you can see by all the pull lines in the photos (taken back in the summer). I think this was down to me getting really confused about what size to cut. I measured the pattern pieces but the one suggested by my measurements looked like it would be huge, so I cut down a couple of sizes to one with a small amount of negative ease. What I didn’t realise until after sewing it was that ponte should be treated more like a stretch woven, with a minimum of no ease rather than negative ease. Continue reading “Pencil skirts galore!”