Waisting Time

Life after my holiday staycation keeps getting in the way of my skirt. However, I remain thankful because my job allows me to continue to buy fabric and sewing accessories! I have a new fabric-hoarding philosophy, but that will be a later post. Back to the skirt.

In my infinite wisdom, I originally traced the size 24 waistband and promptly lost the pieces. In a second stroke of brilliance, I decided that after so many alts in the waist and high hip areas on the skirt, I should trace the size 26 waistband and size it down. 

When I tried on the skirt muslin, without the waistband, I was very excited because the skirt at least resembled the picture on the pattern envelope. Then I noticed how the grain line and CF markings were pulling to the right. Also, my right side seam pulled to the front at my high hip. It was odd because there weren't a ton of horizontal wrinkles indicating tightness. I guess when I was tissue fitting, which took days, I must have pulled, tugged and pinned without paying attention to the CF line and grain line.

The swingy side seam is something that happens on every skirt. It does the same in my RTW jeans. Carolyn often mentions how she has to adjust patterns for her "bodacious biceps;" I have TTT -- tremendously thick thighs. They are as big an issue (almost literally) as my rear.  

But this post is about the waistband. I remembered that during my Thanksgiving Craftsy Marathon, Sandra Betzina, in her Pants Fitting Class, said that she starts by fitting the waist. She makes up a test in the actual fabric, including interfacing and stay tape, and fits it to make sure she got the size right.  

I made up a 26 --- waaay too big, 18 -- waaay too small, 22 and 24.  (I am having a glorious time wasting my poly crepe muslin fabric. Seriously.) I'm getting pretty good at sewing around curves and adding stay tape. 

I was utterly confused about the sizing because I need a 24 minus 1/2" at the top of the band, but the bottom of the band was a different issue.  Thank goodness I found this resource. I think it's from Pants for Real People. Of course I have the book, but I never would have thought to check it because this was a skirt. Silly me.

Here's their illustrated slash and spread. 

Here's my actual. This is the back.

Front and back together.

Front with adjustments for my high hip. *Sigh*

I'm tracing these onto Swedish tracing paper. I will cut them out in the muslin to test the fit. Then, my evil plan is to lay those pattern pieces across the skirt pattern pieces and adjust the skirt to fit the waistband. We'll see ,,,