My Capsule Wardrobe, Wiggle Skirt

Another bold fabric choice for this fitted pencil skirt, this fabric is from New Craft House (Again! Love them for their unique, one of kind pieces). It’s black velvet with a foiled croc effect, when have you ever seen anything like this?! As soon as I saw this I knew I’d be kicking myself if I didn’t get it and once it arrived there really was only one thing I could imagine it becoming – a party skirt! Not that there are any parties to attend right now but a girl can dream!

I wanted to keep the style simple to make the most of the fabric and also because the foiled pieces would make it difficult to sew any small details. I already had the My Capsule Wardrobe book but hadn’t made anything from it yet, looking through I forgot how great this book is! It has really clear diagrams and explanations for every little step and gives you ideas and guidance on how to hack the basic blocks provided to get more use out of them.The Fold Line did a thorough review of the book here.

First of all I started by tracing out the basic straight skirt which only has 2 pieces plus 2 facing pieces which you draft yourself. I didn’t pre wash this fabric because I didn’t think the foil would stand up to it so I proceeded to cut it out. I’d look at a few crocodile print skirts online and decided that the smaller print should be over my legs with the larger print in the middle and down the sides. Then I roughly matched the centre back lines so it wouldn’t look off, I couldn’t pattern match properly because the squares are applied somewhat randomly – it’s a crocodile print after all!

Stitching together was very simple, just a centre back seam with concealed zip, side seams and the facings. I happened to cut the kick pleat edge out on the selvedge so I only needed to fold it back once to get a neat finish, a happy coincidence there.

I tried to lightly iron some seams to begin with but even with an extra layer in between and ironing on the wrong side with the iron hovering above made some of the foil adhere more strongly to the velvet giving it a rough texture. Thankfully, I only did that in a couple small areas so it’s not noticeable. After that I just weighed down the seams with some books overnight.

I had graded from one size at the waist to a larger size on the hips but when I tried it on I could see my grading wasn’t a completely smooth line as it bulged out at the hip so I redrew a more gradual line. Even after fixing this though the skirt felt quite big on me so I decided to hack the pattern into a wiggle skirt instead. The book gives instructions on this but essentially I measured around my legs after I’d taken a step where the hem sits divided this by 4 and reduced the hem width. Then re-stitched the side seams so it now has a much more fitted silhouette which I think suits my figure better.

Love the finished look and glad I took the time to adjust it to suit me. Often once a project is finished I just want to get onto the next but I knew I wouldn’t enjoy wearing it if it felt too big. Now I just need a party to wear it to!