In the second installment of my quest for the perfect pencil skirt, I’ve gone back to a classic. This is the wiggle skirt from the Two-in-One Skirt Collection by Simple Sews. I’ve made this pattern up twice before: a floral stretch cotton sateen version in May 2015, and a goldenrod version out of upholstery fabric in October 2015. The floral version is still in my closet, but I broke the zipper on the second version an decided that it wasn’t worth fixing. Both of these skirts are fine, but the fit wasn’t perfect so I wanted to see if I could improve on it.

To take advantage of my past makes, I went back and reread my blog posts for some clues (the benefits of blogging!). Those posts reminded me of my frustration with the waistband gaping, so I attempted to draft a curved waistband to replace the straight one that comes with the pattern.

This should have been simple, but I only had enough fabric for one attempt. I followed  this tutorial, but forgot to take into account that the pattern is for a fold-over waistband, and the tutorial is for a faced waistband. I ended up making a faced waistband, and had to wing a couple of steps. If you know me, you know I like having a plan and sticking to it, but it all worked out pretty well in the end. The waistband does not gape and is definitely an improvement over the straight original.

Once I had the skirt assembled, I tried it on and was not very pleased. The front darts were sticking out awkwardly making the skirt look sloppy. I looked in my sewing books for clues as to how to fix this, and came up empty. My best guess at a solution was to shorten the darts by about an inch, so that’s what I did. I think this helped, though it’s hard to be sure without before and after pictures.

All in all, I think that this might not have been the best fabric for a pencil skirt. It is a mystery stretch suiting that I got for $2 at the Scrap Exchange. It is on the stiff side, which is why I think I had so much difficulty with it. To succeed with my quest for pencil skirt perfection, maybe I should stick to forgiving fabrics… In the meantime, I have one more pattern cut out of a traditional suiting. Stay tuned!

Abstract
Pattern: Two-in-One Skirt Collection by Simple Sews in size 8
Fabric: 1 yard of mystery green stretch suiting from Scrap Exchange
Cost: $2 fabric + zipper from stash  = $2
Time: 6 hours