Looks Like I Made It: Prima Wrap Skirt II

In my last post I told you November has been busy, and it was no lie! Aside from the fabulous Sew Up North event in Leeds, I've also met some of my fellow Simple Sew Bloggers in Manchester and spent my Wednesday evenings taking a pattern drafting class. It's also been busy busy with gigs and mental at work... I don't know how I've kept up!!

In class last week fellow pattern drafter Gay told me she'd checked out my blog (Hi Gay!) and spookily the Prima Wrap Skirt was next on her to-sew pile!! What a coincidence! I'd already decided I wanted to make another when I picked up this leopard print jersey from B&M in Leeds at the start of the month. My me-made wardrobe has definitely been lacking leopard print because lets face it, it's up there with Houndstooth isn't it! And handily doesn't require pattern matching!! Wehay!!!

So I've worn my black Prima Wrap Skirt A LOT, and the scuba is starting to go a bit bobbly which is a terrible shame! I've had the de-bobbler on it a few times but it just keeps bobbling! For this skirt I wanted to extend the waist so I could wear it a little higher. My black one sits just below my belly button, and I think it's my only item of clothing that does! I find wearing things a little higher on the waist creates the sneaky illusion that I don't have a tummy, so I'm sticking with it!!

To alter the pattern I measured the distance between where I would wear my skirt and where my black one sits which equalled about 2inches. I added this on to the BOTTOM of the pattern as I freaked out and thought I'd make a mess trying to reshape the facing band and extend the darts. Thinking about it now and writing it down it doesn't sound that difficult, especially as I ended up extremely reshaping the side seams anyway! But it seemed like the easier option to add 2 inches onto the bottom when cutting out.

I cut out on the fold as there was no pattern matching to do! So much speedier. NEXT TIME if I'm using jersey again it might be a good idea to take a few cms out of the center front and center back so I don't have the massive chunks to slice off the side seams!!

Once all my pieces were prepped, front panel tacked onto the front skirt and center back zip put in, I took a wild guess and pinned my side seams with a 2.5 inch seam allowance. I know it seems pretty crazy, but the pattern is designed for wovens not knits and I also planned on wearing it higher on the waist than the pattern intended. I tried on and it made my bum look amazing!!

But on the whole, past the hips it was a little too tight. I eased out the seam allowance to about 1.5 inches at the bottom... Then back to 2 inches to get a bit more bum shape back!!

I tried on lots of times. With it in mind that the facing band would make it a little tighter still at the waist, I wanted to make sure I had enough ease to still zip it up!! I made these changes to the facing band so that it would fit then stitched it up.