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!