Summer Sewing: Floral Denim Skirt

Almost a couple of years ago (egad, how time flies), Gillian, Andrea, Sara and I met up in Kitchener. It was a really enjoyable (predominantly knitting-oriented) day, but we did hit up the local FabricLand, which is where I got the stretch floral denim I used to make this skirt today:

My TNT short denim skirt - New Look 6843

I bought a 1.65 yards (it's 56" wide with 30 per cent crosswise stretch). My plan was to make a structured sleeveless summer dress but I never found the pattern. Really, I wanted to remake a RTW dress I've had for 20 years that seems to fit at every size. But this is great fabric and I want to use it, not to let it languish in the stash. So I opted to use almost a yard of it on this skirt and I don't regret it.

I altered the pattern very slightly, yet again, to give a bit more room at the full hip and waist. Alas, it was overkill so I ended up having to do a bit of after-the-fact surgery because, when I put on the finished skirt, there was some fabric puffing (pooling?) at the hips. Here's what I mean by surgery:

If you enlarge the photo, you'll see 2 lines of stitching, at each side seam, for about 3.5 inches from just below the waistband. That's because I had to remove about 3/4 inch of fabric at the hips to (more or less) fix the fabric puffing. To totally fix it, I'd have to be much more serious, aka remove the waistband, and there is no way I am doing that given that my quick fix takes care of the problem at anyone's gaze but mine. And mine is too critical.

You can see how the skirt is a bit square, squarer than me. But this fabric has much more stretch than any other version I've made - even if it is the most structured fabric I've used. I suspected, given these variables, that the newly altered skirt might be a bit roomy. Mind you, the idea of making something too tight fills me with anxiety right about now. I want to see the forest for the trees.

A propos of this, it ain't my best zipper insertion but I hit it on the first try and I felt no compulsion to fuck with adequate:

You'll never notice that the seam allowances on either side of that zip don't quite meet unless you're staring at my ass. On the plus side, I my waist band is awesome. Not only does it align perfectly but it's very tidy on the wrong side:

I used my fave method for waist band insertion.

This took about 5 hours, not bad by my standards, and I'm pretty happy with the finished result.

Whatcha think?