Simplicity 3881: old-stash skirt

Just a quick post to share the other deep stash item I finished the other day – this one’s a super easy knit skirt. This fabric and pattern are from my very early days of garment sewing, when I just bought random fabric I kind of liked at full price at the local fabric store, imagining I could just sort of wing something without a pattern. When I dug this fabric up from the bottom of my oldest fabric box, I abandoned my idealistic “I’ll just figure it out” approach and pulled out this out of print pattern I got on clearance at a local store when they liquidated their Simplicitys a couple years ago (Simplicity 3881). It’s a pattern for wovens, but I thought it would work out well for a knit, converting the waistband/zipper to elastic, and so it proved:

This is a pretty simple skirt, made even simpler in a knit. The flounce is basically two semi-circles joined to make a full circle and attached to the skirt body. For the waistband, I just folded down the top  1 3/4 inches to make a channel for elastic (1 1/2 inch, since that’s what I had – and I like the more RTW look of wider elastic). I left the darts when I cut out the skirt, but didn’t sew them; they just got eased into the elastic waist. I also left the bottom unhemmed, since I thought the clean cut would look better than any hem I could attempt in this lightish poly-lycra jersey. All in all, I completed the whole thing in one sitting (and got it all squeezed in to one yard of fabric)! And it’s got great movement to it, thanks to the lightness and drape of the jersey – I think this pattern is actually more well suited to knits than wovens.  And, I mean, any excuse for a spin shot, right?

My review of the skirt is here. Next I’m going to get cracking on my Minoru (um, sew-a-late, I know), and see if I can get (mostly) caught up. I may be destined to never actually sew-along with anybody…