Tutorial: Drafting a Pencil Skirt, Part Three

Just leave this pattern on the shelf--
lonely, heartsick, its purpose unfulfilled.

This is Part Three of a four-part series on drafting your own pencil skirt pattern.  (See Parts One, Two, and Four.)

Step Five: Waistband?

When it comes to the waistband, you've got options.  If you have a tried-and-true waistband from another pattern, just throw a seam allowance along the top edge of your skirt and use that.  If, like me, you are too cheap to buy patterns when you can just draw a rectangle, you can draft your own waistband.  I constantly refer to the waistbands chapter of this book, which describes several very useful ways of making and attaching a waistband.  I won't go into too much detail about it, but here's what my waistband pattern looks like:

In Which, Having Invented Sleeves, I Impersonate A Flamingo

Note to self: do not wear black in hundred-degree Kentucky weather.

(If you can't see the sweat beading up on my neck, it's not because it isn't there.)

Dress: A simple black chemise dress in cotton lawn with short sleeves, slightly gathered portrait neckline, and self-sash.

Tutorial: Drafting a Pencil Skirt, Part Two

This pattern will be so sad that you
don't need it any more. :(

This is Part Two of a four-part series on drafting your own pencil skirt pattern.  (See Parts One, Three, and Four.)

Step Four: Goodness Gracious Darts

Fabric grain is a pain in the ass.  If your waist and hip measurements are within a few inches of each other, you don't need to worry about this; but if the difference is any greater, the waist-to-hip section of your skirt pattern is going to start to look pretty diagonal.  And diagonal is bad.  Diagonal means bias, and bias means stretch, and stretch means the side seams of your skirt are going to be unstable.  Unstable is bad!  Unstable looks like this:

Tutorial: Drafting a Pencil Skirt, Part One

You don't need this anymore!
Don't you feel independent?

This is Part One of a four-part series on drafting your own pencil skirt pattern. (See Parts Two, Three, and Four.)


It's not that hard! Really. While a circle or A-line four-gore skirt may be simpler to fit, the classic pencil skirt is just as easy to construct, especially when you know it inside and out because you've drafted the pattern yourself. Furthermore, it's a great one to make yourself because it's so fitted--why wrestle with a pattern made for somebody else's smaller hips and bigger butt when you can take careful measurements and make one that fits you perfectly?

This pattern is unlined--I just wear a slip with mine and wash the slip instead, which means I can make my skirts out of whatever fabric I like and I never have to dry-clean (score!). I love them in any kind of wool, heavy linens, cottons, or cotton-linen blends, anything that stays where you put it and is fairly thick and opaque. I've never attached this skirt to a bodice, but I imagine it would work quite well as the bottom half of a wiggle dress, Joan Holloway style. I put a zipper up the back seam of mine--metal looks especially vintage--but you can move the zipper to the side or insert a button placket instead (though that's a bit too complicated for this tutorial).

Note: Don't worry about seam allowances until the very end, when we'll add them to all seam lines.

Step Zero: Gather Your Materials

Sailor Shorts: Kentucky Edition

HELLO EVERYONE.  I'm in Kentucky visiting my family, so today's photos are from a (relatively) exotic locale: my dad's garden!

I found Queen Anne's Lace!  It is my favorite flower because it sounds fancy but is kind of a weed.

Shorts: adapted from my Sailor Pants pattern--high waisted, with five belt loops and a button placket down the left side.  That's right.  I invented buttons for these shorts.

Movies You Ought To See: His Girl Friday (& some thoughts on history)

His Girl Friday (1940).  Rosalind Russell attempts to escape the newspaper business by marrying a sweet but simple insurance salesman, played by Ralph Bellamy, but her ex-husband (and ex-boss) Cary Grant isn't about to let that happen.

The really wonderful thing about His Girl Friday is that, appearances to the contrary, it is not a love story about Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant: it's a love story about Rosalind Russell and the newspaper business.  For the middle hour of the movie, Grant is offscreen trying to get Bellamy thrown in jail.  That's a whole hour where all we see is the fast-talking and talented Ms. Russell quipping with hardened newspapermen, interviewing murderers, comforting maligned and helpless women, and tackling police wardens for a story (literally tackling, it's brilliant).  No wonder that at the end of the movie she finds she can't give it up, even for the love of a good man.

I Cleaned My Sewing Room You Guys

For the first time ever, the floor is not covered in fabric scraps and trailing bits of thread, my feet are not printed with textile dust, and I can see where everything is!  It's amazing!  It's a pretty nice little space, too--we had originally planned to use it as an office (hence the vestigial printer) but since I write best stretched out on a couch and dear partner likes her little desk in the living room better, it has slowly morphed into a sewing room.  It has its charms--good light in the afternoon and evening, a couch (not pictured) to sit on while I do handwork, the Door Into Nowhere (one of several in our weird Victorian-servants-quarters apartment).  And, of course, the fact of having an entire dedicated room for my sewing is still a wonderful novelty.

It also has its little quirks: the rickety makeshift desk; the very hard, very cold floor; the door that blows closed and sticks in the jamb whenever there's the slightest draft so that on at least one memorable occasion I have had to shout for dear partner to come and let me out.