Sometimes these things happen. You sew something up and it doesn’t fit. Guess what, this rarely ever happens to me, but it’s happened three times in the last couple weeks. One item was the Insa skirt from the Farbenmix book which I’d intended for my daughter Sophie.
No matter. I not only know scores of little girls who’d likely enjoy a frilly skirt, I also have a smaller-scale model in-house who’s happy to pose so I can get pictures before I send it to its new home:
As I took pictures Nels reached for my scissors and began to snip at a stray thread on the skirt. This is something he’s seen me fuss over a million times. I’m touched he knows it’s part of the sewing process.
On to the pattern. As I discovered, it does run small; this is easy enough to forstall, but I was lazy and just sewed the same size I’d been sewing from the book. If you’d like to make sure you don’t make my mistake, simply measure the waistband and yoke circumference, take your sewing tape, and put it around your child’s hips at that same measurement. This circumference should have enough room from waist to mid-thigh your child can move comfortably. Remember, as it’s an elastic waist it’s easy to make a slightly large skirt fit just fine at the waist. Anyway, a too-large skirt is obviously a more desirable result than a too-small one as your child will grow into it in about five minutes.
The skirt’s lines are lovely. There is an easy and fabric showy feature on the underskirt that allows you to add volume to the skirt and show off more of the underlayer. This is accomplished by vertical lengths of 1/4″ elastic on the underside of the underskirt, midway through each gore. The elastic is cut to length and triple-stitched: a more “bubbly” effect is obtained the shorter the elastic strips you use, as I did:
The skirt is, like all the patterns in the book, made for using many different fabrics, scraps, and embellishments. You can add a contrast waistband (as I did) or use the upper edge of the yoke for the elastic facing. It’s the perfect skirt for twirling and lots of movement, and also to show off trims and topstitching:
And finally, I added my own label at the center back yoke, on the inside of the skirt. Who knows where it may end up and maybe they’ll come look me up and find my sewing and be inspired.
