You’ve seen the jacket, and a peek of the skirt as part of the suit, but now it’s the skirt’s time in the spotlight!
(Dutch readers – who is Odette Simons, anyway? Dutch celebrity? Fashion designer? Stylist? She’s appearing in most issues these days and it’s bugging me…)
I just loved the shape of the yoke and pockets on skirt #7 from the January 2010 KnipMode. Essentially they’ve just drawn a bunch of lines onto an A-line skirt pattern which you then cut apart to be the wide yoke, the main skirt body, the pocket backing, and the pocket facing. All that pattern piece reusing means you actually only end up tracing 3 pattern pieces (front, back, and pocket) because you cut up the pieces as you go along. So the top of the skirt back pattern gets cut off for the facing, the skirt front gets cut apart for the yoke, the pocket back, and the facing, etc.
I had a bit of an “A-ha!” moment when I realised you could pretty much do this to any skirt pattern with whatever shapes you like and end up with something really cool. Yet another reason why I love patterns without seam allowances!
I shortened this skirt by a hefty 4 inches so it’d be above the knee (my preferred length). The magazine photo is a bit misleading as it looks like it should be that length anyway until you look up and realised the skirt’s been hoiked up really high in the waist to make it that much shorter in the hem. I just preferred to make the whole thing shorter. Full disclosure – my hem finish is actually much nicer than it looks in the photos. I didn’t have enough time to press it after both rounds of hand sewing, as James was on his way out the door and it was “now or wait another week” for the photoshoot.
The yoke didn’t totally match up, which was annoying but was totally my own fault for not thread-basting it. I know it should match up because I cut the pattern pieces apart myself!
I interfaced all the facings on this pattern, but I only used fusible bias tape on the curved edges of the front yoke seams. I think if I did it again I’d also interface that top yoke piece to reduce wrinkles that occur naturally when I move and make it just a little bit cleaner.
The pockets have facings on both sides, with the rest of the pocket in lining fabric. I would normally cut the pocket back in fashion fabric and the pocket front (the portion away from the body) in lining fabric, but truth be told I didn’t have enough fabric for a pocket bag in tweed. ha! So these pockets just have a tweed facing and the rest is lining fabric, which is probably best anyway in terms of reducing bulk.
Take a peek inside:
And in the centre back, I made a perfect invisible zipper, yee ha!
This time I did it by machine, using a regular ol’ zipper foot with my favourite two-pass method (though I often do them by hand). By two-pass I mean that I first machine baste the zipper tape down, not sewing particularly close to the teeth or anything. I then open up the zipper and press the coils open, and holding them open with my fingers as I machine sew reeeeeally close to the teeth. I just find I get a much better result this way than with the invisible zipper foot, which just doesn’t get close enough for my liking.
Like the jacket, the skirt is fully lined in pale blue, sealed up at the bottom because the tweed is really prone to fraying and I wanted to protect it as much as possible… This is the back view, but the inside of the front is pretty much the same.
And here’s the happy pair together one last time!
