When Minerva kindly gave me 2m of suiting fabric for a project, I decided to use it to build up my work wardrobe, making a Tilly and the Buttons Megan dress with contrast sleeves. Luckily there was enough fabric left over to make a skirt as well. The fabric is perfect for work, being substantial enough not to need lining and not creasing either, so I was pretty glad to be able to get another item from the 2m. It's brilliant value too by the way (currently only £3.99 per metre).
All I needed was a simple pattern, for a pencil skirt that wasn't too tightly fitted and had no waist band. I found McCall's pattern M7631 in my stash which ticked the boxes. I cut a size 14 as the measurements appeared to fit what I needed, though normally I would cut a 12 in commercial patterns. I did have to reduce the side seams by about 1cm to get a better fit, and could possibly reduce further, but will see how it wears first. Even with taking time to adapt seams, it only took about half a day to cut and construct this skirt. The fabric doesn't need lining and with this pattern, you can really get a good, solid make in quite a quick turnaround. It would be easy to fit to different shapes by altering side seams or the darts.
To be fair, I also didn't really follow the pattern instructions. They had diagrams and enough information to make this easily - there's not really a lot to this skirt so it shouldn't be too hard or need a lot of explanation! Normally, you would sew darts, then side seams, then affix the facing. As I thought there would need to be some fiddling with the side seams, I used a different order that meant that if I needed to make alterations, there wouldn't need to be too much unpicking. I stitched the darts as normal, then fixed the facing to the front and back skirt panels. I stitched the sides next and was able to adapt them, treating the facing and skirt as one longer piece. It was only when I was happy with the side seams that I understitched the facing to the waist seams.
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