Made By A Fabricista: Birthday Skirt in Red!

HI Fashionistas!

The month of May is a month of celebration for me and my family. We celebrated my birthday and Mothers Day this past weekend, and my husband and I will be celebrating our 9th wedding anniversary this week.

So for the month of May, I sewed up a voluminous pleated circle skirt in a beautiful red shirting fabric. Here it is:

Initially, I had planned on creating a high low dramatic hemline, and that is what I was planning on wearing until mid of last week. But after trying it on, it felt very heavy and was not too flattering on me, so I chopped it off to an even hemline about 19 inches from the bottom of the waistband to get this look.

The skirt is completely self-drafted and I will talk about that more in this post. Here is the back view:

A bit obsessed with these owl earrings lately..

I drafted the waistband for the skirt 1first. It is basically a rectangle. For the length, I used my waist measurement, plus 1/2 inch ease, plus an extra 1 inch for seam allowance (since I stitch using 1/2 inch seam allowance to attach the zip on the back). For the hight of the waistband, I wanted a finished measurement of 2.5 inches so the pattern height is 6 inches (double of 2.5 plus 1-inch seam allowance total)

To get this type of volume, I measured from my side seam to side seam on my body (let's call this measurement W) and then drafted a half circle skirt pattern on muslin using a waist measurement of W. I then cut 3 from that pattern and paneled them together. Once that was done, the waist of the 3 panel skirt was larger than my waist circumference. So then I added some pleats to the skirt to make the measurement of the skirt match the measurement of the waistband. Since the waistband was drafted to my waist, all I had to do was freehand some pleats to make the two fit. And Voila! Extra volume!

So you know I had to twirl in this skirt!

This was so fun to wear!

I wore it for my birthday on Saturday:

I also wanted to share a picture of Connor. He is 3 months now. He has started smiling a bit, although he is stingy with his smiles. He is such a serious lil' dude!

And I also ended up wearing it for Mothers Day. It's a fun skirt to wear!

I hope you are having a lovely may. It is getting toasty here, we have had temps in the 90's this past week. The summer is going to be super hot, and I plan on staying home a lot and hosting a lot of playdates to keep myself and my kiddo busy.

I'll see you soon with my next make.

XOXO-
Vatsla from Fashion Behind The Seams

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