Sporadic Pencil Skirt

I started sewing this pencil skirt a month or two ago and thought I’d whip it out quickly…that didn’t happen. I lost a bit of my momentum after I initially cut out my material and sewed the first couple of seams; I then sewed sporadically a weekend here and a weekend there until I finally finished.

I picked up this bottom-weight fabric a few months ago at a local fabric store. It wasn’t a very expensive fabric (and on sale too—which made me extra happy); I think it was about $5/yard. I chose it because I loved the subdued blue color and subtle pattern, and I also thought the fabric felt nice. When I saw it I immediately thought it would make a good pencil skirt, so I bought the fabric (which then sat in my fabric stack for a while…).

When I finally got into a sewing mood again, I wanted to sew my pencil skirt. However, looking over the patterns I had, I only had one pencil skirt pattern that was one of those super easy patterns for those learning to sew. The end product is just two pieces of fabric sewn together with a slit on the side. I had sewn the pattern once before and wasn’t excited to sew it again. I wanted my skirt to have a slit in the back and have a waistband (which I think is pretty essential in making a skirt look complete).

So I looked through my patterns and found a dress pattern that I thought I could steal the skirt portion of it; I just used its two pattern pieces and added a waistband piece (from a skirt pattern). The pattern also used a lining so I incorporated a lining into my skirt as well. I’ve done self-lined bodices for dresses before, but had never done a skirt lining before. However, I figured it couldn’t be too hard and I wanted to do it because I generally prefer lined skirts since they look and feel so much better than the unlined ones.

Having a lined skirt did create extra steps and forced me to think a bit more about how to do things. I followed my dress directions for the skirt to a point, but sometimes they didn’t seem terribly clear or weren’t applicable to my skirt, so I disregarded them and just sewed in a way that made sense to me. For the most part it was pretty smooth sewing it and I’m pretty happy with my finished skirt. It’s simple and I think it’ll be fairly versatile because it has a pretty neutral pattern.