Burda 5/2017 Skirt 108: Nearly a Pencil Skirt

This is one of those projects where a well-timed Burda issue, a Fabricland sale and a nice fabric on the ends table combined to make a skirt project that I in no way need but will wear a lot anyway.

It’s sewn up twice in the magazine; the floral version looks pegged, and the solid version doesn’t. Go figure. But I loved the “pockets” (more on that below) and it looked work appropriate and the print is perfect for a bunch of very brightly coloured tops I have already. This is a lightweight cotton satin.

1) Size down. There’s three inches of ease in the waistband. No one needs three inches of ease in a pencil skirt waist. What were they even thinking? Even after sizing down I still took about an inch out of the waist.

2) Be extremely precise with your hem allowances. Because of the “pockets” panel, all pieces are hemmed *before* being sewn together. There was a whole lot of finishing, hemming, pinning, unpinning, rehemming, and repinning in the skirt construction for me, and even so, one of the edges doesn’t quite line up.

3) It’s not lined: serge, overlock, or otherwise finish the seam allowances before joining.

4) It’s not particularly pegged.

Is it? The actual skirt pieces have a pegged shape, but the side seams are left open for a slit for walking and it takes the shaping right out. I took about an inch out of the bottom back seam, tapering to the hips, and it helped–these photos are post-pegging. The original was very boxy.

5) With the instructions as written, they’re not pockets, they’re “pockets”: They’re not sewn horizontally to the underlying skirt anywhere. This is easy to fix by sewing them down yourself, but it’s a weird and puzzling gap.

6) I still found it a bit loose at the waist. I took in the waist about an extra inch to get a snugger fit, which was a pain in the butt, but less so than having a loose pencil skirt.

7) It is very long and because you do the hemming first, it’s not possible to shorten it after you try it on.

8) Also, I misunderstood the directions with how to attach the “pocket” panel to the skirt below the first seam mark and edgestitched it. Which is fine, but apparently you’re supposed to sew the rest of it down on the *inside* edge, not the outside edge. No biggie but I’d do it the other way next time.

It’s a nice, if finicky, skirt pattern with a few interesting details that make it a bit different from a standard pencil skirt. I recommend being very careful in choosing and tracing a size due to how difficult it is to alter afterwards, and making up a first version in something less expensive to see what you think of the length. I’d probably shorten it by about six inches myself.