Skirts & Pockets

Oh hey there. I've been busy lately at my sewing machine, and I thought I should share some of the fruits of my labour with you.

Do you know what I love? Skirts. I freaking love skirts. I live in Saskatchewan, and suffer through -30 winters, and yet I will happily wear skirts all through January (Mind you, I wear tights and leggings with them - frostburn is not for me).

Do you know what else I love? Pockets. Seriously. All clothes should have pockets. I've bought dresses in years past simply because they had pockets. I'm not even kidding. I had this one dress that was too short for me to feel comfortable in and too tight through the thighs to wear tights with. It also had strange shaping that I never thought flattered me. The neckline was too low, and the sleeves were too tight to lift my arms up. But that dress had pockets. So not only did I buy it, but I stubbornly wore it multiple times.

Now that I'm sewing my own clothes, I've set a couple of goals. One of those goals is to add pockets to almost everything. To be fair, I haven't really gotten there yet. I've made a few garments that could have pockets, but I'd have to draft my own, and that's scary.

However, I made this skirt! And look! It has pockets! I made the skirt using this tutorial.

However, I have happily dumped this skirt into my mental Still-Learning bucket. There's a few things I don't like about it, and I did those things on purpose. But, I learned my lessons, I learned what I do and don't like about clothes, and I won't be making those mistakes again.

1. The pockets. I had to draft my own, so I drew the shape shown, pretended to put my hand in, and cut them out. But they're just too small all over, The opening isn't big enough for my hand to slide into comfortable and the inside isn't deep enough for even my phone. Lesson learned - Make pockets bigger.
2. I didn't draft the waist band large enough to actually go over my hips. I'm not completely sure how I made that mistake, but it means I have to put the skirt on over my head. Lesson learned - Double check sizes when self-drafting.
3. I didn't have 1 1/2" elastic, but I did have 3/4", so I decided to use two lengths of that, one on top of the other. Lesson learned - Just buy waistband elastic.
4. I did a mock fitting to see how the waist band would fit, and cut the elastic from that. Then I zig-zag-stitched the length of the elastic down to the inside of the back waistband. But I don't really like how that makes the back of the waist band look. 
5. During my mock fitting, I decided I wanted to skirt to sit on my high hips, rather than my natural waist. Lesson learned - I prefer shapes that hit my natural waist, and I want skirts to sit that high.

 I still like the skirt, and have worn it on occasion. I still love the fun polka dot print, and the fullness of it. But most of all, I appreciate the many lessons this skirt taught me. I know this isn't my last Still-Learning garment, and that's okay. It's okay to make mistakes, as long as I keep learning from them.