New Horizon Designs - Pierside Pencil Skirt

One of my current closet problems is that I have a handful of tops and a handful of bottoms but not very many of them match. It’s a little frustrating when I have a specific shirt or skirt I want to wear and can’t find anything to wear with it! This is especially a problem I have for church since I can’t wear dresses at the moment (no nursing friendly dresses and I really don’t want to make any ha). For awhile, I’ve been mostly wearing a RTW navy blue skirt that i have had forever since it matches most of my things. I definitely need a little revamping! Low and behold, the Pierside Pencil Skirt from New Horizon Designs! I seriously love this skirt and the different lengths and hem options. It’s always nice to have one pattern with multiple looks. I’ve made a few adjustments to the pattern after making a few for the perfect fit for my body.

It’s funny, the more I sew, the more things/adjustments I’m discovering that makes the finished product fit better and sometimes sew up easier. The body shape I have is a rectangle, or if you are into fruit named body types, I am a banana. (If you’d like to know your body shape, you can calculate it here) With that, I usually always have to make some kind of adjustment, whether that be grading or something else. With that, if I look at myself in the mirror, it looks like the fullest part of me is below my hips and above my thighs. Someone told me that is from working out. Totally not complaining, but it just means I have to do the modifications below (which are super simple thankfully!)

ADJUSTMENTS

Based on my measurements, my waist falls under a size 6 and my hips were a 4 (but now are closer to a 2 with the measurements I just took this morning). Even though my measurement puts me in different sizes, I sewed up a straight 4. I’m so glad I did that because the size 4 waistband fits me perfectly! Now, since I’m a rectangle, that means I have no hips (I have a little booty though!), which means I can’t have a lot of curve in my side seam at my hips or I end up with excess fabric there. This is a newer thing I’ve discovered but it has made the fit better in a lot of my bottoms way better!

I basically kept the waist the same and took out the hip curve as shown in the picture below. You can also see that this took off quite a big chunk of the pocket. To fix this, I measured the original length of the slant pocket and use that measurement to make a new pocket opening, starting at the original pocket line, as you can see in the second picture. This was perfect too because i did not like how far out to the side the pockets originally were. I was already planning on making some kind of modification for the pocket, but now no need, problem solved! You can see in the last (third) photo of the pocket comparison, the new pocket on the floral vs the original pocket on the yellow (click to enlarge since the floral is a little tricky to see!) The yellow skirt was already sewn up before I took it in at the hip. It’s sew much easier before it’s sewn!

After making the updated version of the Sabrina Slims (more on that on a later post), while I was making the floral skirt, before I added the waistband, I noticed that I had a decent amount of gapping in the back. It fit great around the hips/bum but it was loose around my high hip in the back where the waistband will connect. I’m not sure why I didn’t really realize this before. OR maybe I didn’t really think much of it. (the pattern very well may be designed for it to be this way though) However, it just means I have to stretch the waistband a decent amount in order to fit the skirt opening. This also caused a lot of rippling at the waist seam, but isn’t noticeable while wearing. You can kind of see it in the two photos below, but more noticable (for me at least!) in person.

So for the floral skirt, in order to fix this, I added darts! Look how perfect it fits before the waistband is even added! (I should have taken a before I added the darts picture, but the darts are about 3/4” wide when pinched. That’s quite a bit of gapping!) I also decided not to hem this one, so I just threaded my serger tail back through the stitches. This skirt is one of my favorites!

Now, if you remember in the beginning of the post, I redid my measurements and my hips are much closer to a size 2 (my waist is still the same though). So I printed out the size 2 and will just copy the adjustments I made from the size 4 (I laid my traced size 4 on top of the newly printed size 2 and I took in the hip curve in more than the size 2, ha!) Except I did run out of tracing paper the other day. I guess I could technically use my traced size 4 pieces and use that to trace my new ones since I probably won’t need that size anymore… But I ordered some tracing paper from amazon and it comes in tomorrow! I recently got some leopard and herringbone ponte fabric from Raspberry Creek Fabrics that will be these skirts! I’m super pumped! (sorry the leopard just barely retired!) I seriously love the RCF club ponte fabric. It’s perfect for all sorts of apparel and sews up SO nice!

ANNOUNCEMENT!

I’m going to start sending out a newsletter! This will probably be weekly, biweekly, monthly…who knows, I haven’t quite decided yet…so make sure you are subscribed to stay in the loop! It will be a bit of an adventure but it should be fun!

Happy sewing!

Cheers!