I mentioned in my last post that I’d used the StyleARC Fay skirt as a base for the simple stretch skirt I made to match my latest rendition of Vogue 8815.  The Fay skirt appears to be super simple – and really, it pretty much is, since it is just one pattern piece.  But it was still worth buying, for me anyway.

I’ve made plenty of simple straight, stretch skirts before. Cut the fabric to a rectangle that will fit around me, whack in a centre back seam, hem it, add elastic to the waist. The Fay skirt is different to that as it has gentle shaping at the waist and towards the bottom, so that it is a little pegged to your body. And it is self lined – no hemming needed, and a little more substance to the finished product.

I have shortened this skirt considerably, as I was working with a very limited amount of fabric but still really wanted to make it self-lined as per the pattern. I did this by folding the pattern in half, then taking a big tuck through the centre of it until it would fit onto the fabric. By doing that I was able to retain the shaping, with the skirt narrowing at the bottom. I made size 12.

And I didn’t get the stripe matching perfect at the side seams – dammit. The fabric is a ponte remnant from Spotlight. I’ll make this pattern again in the longer length. It gives a much nicer shape than my usual “tube” skirt, and the self-lining is great.  Did I mention that it takes about as long to sew as it does to cut out? In fact, I think I spent longer changing the thread colour on my overlocker than I did on sewing up the skirt.  The waist is elasticised – also simple.

I’m on a bit of a StyleARC binge at the moment – I have a number of stretch garments all cut out waiting for sewing. And I’ve recently discovered Lekala patterns, where you order a pdf pattern customised to your measurements. I’ll be interested to see how well they fit me!