The Wiksten Tulip skirt

The Wiksten Tulip skirt is the first garment I made with a printed PDF pattern. At about $4 its a bargain, but I'm a bit underwhelmed by it, and doubt if I will make it again which is sad because it is a lovely pattern, just not great on my bod.

I measured up a small, but once I had the waistband attached it was sitting too high on my waist, and the pleats were distorted from straining around my muffin top. So I took the waistband off, let out 2 pleats in the back and added a new waistband where I had added the extra space from the 2 pleats. And it was huge damn it.

I was getting over it, quickly, when I looked at the construction of one of my favourite Witchery skirts, which had some elastic in the side of the skirt, and decided the only way to bring it in was to whack a piece of stretched elastic in the back to gather it in. It actually looked ok, but still wasn't tight enough around my waist, so then I added the belt and its's ok now. I don't love the fit on me - I think my waist is too short, or something.

Navy linen, with vintage yellow buttons from Etsy, and yellow contrast stitching. And creases. Bloody linen.
I did add side pockets, using the pocket pattern from my Colette Iris shorts, but they're a bit low and pointless. Meh. I was pleased with the button holes though! Next time I'll try the Kelly skirt from Megan Nielsen patterns - I won it in a massive stash of goodies from her birthday celebrations.

One little trick that I did find worked well was a special stitch on my machine that mimics a top stitch - its a special triple straight stitch (its actually a straight stitch for sewing knits), that does 3 straight stitches in the one spot (forward, back, forward again), and creates a nice thick top stitch - which is cool because one doesn't need to buy thicker top stitching thread - you can use whatever you have on hand. Ace!






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