hello! I made a few new skirts, using a new pattern, the Acacia skirt. The pattern is a Peppermint magazine and Warp and Weft collaboration… available in the magazine for free, or as a pdf pattern from their website. It’s a cute little A-line miniskirt with deep deep pockets and a central back zip closure. Of course I’m always going to be interested in a winter miniskirt pattern with pockets! I couldn’t wait to try it out!
Unusually for me, I decided to make a sort of toile. It’s a wearable toile, of course. For this, I used a piece of fabric that was given to me by my Indonesian sister-in-law. It was fortunately the absolute perfect size to cut out the skirt!
I really like this little skirt but I’m glad I made a toile, because I felt that the front was a bit flat for me, making it jut out a bit at the waistline. I unpicked the pocket joining seam and cut out a dart allowance from the pocket on the inner edge, and this worked really well. So I made this same adjustment when I made the real version, the corduroy one.
The wide wale corduroy I used for the “real” skirt is is colour Amber from Warp and Weft (available on their website here). I decided to do a “nice” finish to all the raw edges inside and applied a HongKong finish. For this I found a small scrap of lovely brown linen leftover from my patchwork dress. It was just enough to finish the skirt.
Corduroy is a little tricky when it comes to the seams lining up in the wales… and centre back seams are notorious for turning out pretty terrible, so I did this zip insertion by hand so it looks perfect. So glad I did this!
Initially, I added 10cm to the length of the skirt, I thought this would be necessary because the samples I saw did look quite short on the models… however after a few wears I have to admit that I felt like it was a little too long after all. Trust in the designer! I ended up lopping off that extra 10cm. I wouldn’t rule out adding length to the design again in the future, but a lining is absolutely necessary, imo.
Is it a little too short now? I’m not sure, maybe. It still has a reasonable hem so I could still add a little length back. Probably in the future I would add 5cm and then see how I feel about that.
Personally, I don’t think it’s too short, as much as the pattern seems a bit “wide”, and the corduroy makes it look even more so. Perhaps if made from different fabric it would look more in proportion (or maybe it’s just me liking more fitted clothes).
A few years ago I made a similar skirt out of heavy wide stripe corduroy, Burda 6252, and I made a similar mistake – concerned about modesty, as the skirt seemed too short, I added 7 cm to the length. The skirt turned into a tent and I looked frumpy in it, I have worn it only once. Which was a pity, as I had added quality lining, Hongkong finish of all seams, the works. Having read your post and seen your pictures, I’m inspired to shorten it back and try to wear it actually. Yours turned excellent, it seems these skirts simply have to be short.