Seville Skirt, Again?

I made my 4th Seville Skirt from Itch To Stitch during a sewing date with a friend this month.

I started with a lovely, light, silky polyester fabric purchased recently with my birthday money. The graduated size of the dots is very striking and I thought it would make a great swishy skirt. Because I'm slowly losing weight, the lovely linen version I made in May is now so big in the waist that I have to cinch it in place with a belt, I decided to take this version in.

Originally, my Seville Skirts were sewn size 8 in the hip, blended to a 12 in the waist. Given my recent experience with sewing a straight size 8 for the Itch To Stitch Emily Culottes, I assumed that would be the way to go for my Seville as well. That's right. I made the biggest mistake a sewer can make: I didn't measure first. I didn't take into consideration that the Emily is fitted with a curved yolk at the waist while Seville is a straight narrow waistband. As a result, after taking all that time making sure each piece was cut perfectly with all the dot lines matching up, my waist was 1 inch too small. There was no way it would be wearable.

Deeply upset with my folly, I took a guacamole break and worked out a fix: I measured my waist, then I measured the waistband pattern pieces on the uncut pattern master. Turns out a size 10 waist is exactly perfect. So, I chopped off the size 8 waistband off my skirt and cut out a size 10.

I fiddled with the new band and did some measuring to see how far down from the top I had to go to make the longer size fit. Fortunately, not far. About 3/4 of an inch is all I lost. I trimmed the skirt and lining 3/4 of an inch from the top and attached the new waistband.

I was highly satisfied and my frustration quickly turned into excitement.

I did find myself a bit disappointed that my lines on the left side seam are about 1/4 of an inch off at the zipper, but that invisible zipper went in flawlessly the first time AND my waistband seams match. I'm chalking it up to the fact that I had to trip the top of the skirt. Beside, no one will notice and eventually I'll forget about it.

After the zipper goes in, the rest of the skirt really is a piece of cake. You guys have seen these shots before. Hand basing the waistband together and stitching in the ditch.

Here's where I switched it a bit. Because I lost 3/4 inch at the top with my new waistband, I chose to do a narrow hem at the bottom to minimize loss of length. I just ran my serger around the bottom without trimming anything but the fuzz. I turned it up, stitched, then turned again to catch stitch the hem by hand. This type of hem suits the fluidity of the fabric very well.

In the end, the skirt is only about 1/2-3/4 of an inch shorter than it was intended. I have it cut at a modest enough length that coming up a little didn't really hurt the finished product.