Adjusting a pattern using a skirt sloper - first try, mostly successful

 

When I got this super nice ponte from GStreet in Rockville Maryland (~2018?), I knew I wanted to make a pencil skirt out of it. 

Pinspiration:

I had this saved for ages and unfortunately lost the credit/url. Searching on pinterest and google lens didn't find it either.

The Love Notions Sybil Illusion skirt pattern has a perfect view for this fabric. 

But, for previous skirts I've made, I have had to slash and spread at the fullest part of my butt to add extra length. I re-trued the grainline afterward, but with that and the addition made to the hips and then taking in at the back waist... I was concerned the pin stripes would be all distorted. 

This pattern, like every other knit pencil skirt pattern I've seen, has the same piece for the back and front. There is no way that would work for me. I could have made a toile and then added and subtracted and moved around until it worked but it was very intimidating. Plus. this fabric was not very expensive but it's precious because I don't know how I could get more. 

Ok, enter the sloper. I volunteered to help work with a trusted expert in the sewing industry to test read/sew her new book in development. I will spend a lot of time singing her praises when it's released because so far, it's amazing. So I have a good sloper that is just amazing. 

The book has guidance on going from a woven sloper to knit depending on the stretch. And there are also lots of guides online. I ended up keeping my darts because of the stripes. If there were no stripes, I would have taken out the one in the front and taken that up in the side seam. I would have taken one of the two in the back the same way. The other thing you can do is to get rid of the ease and even go to negative ease. I wanted none of that because I don't want it to creep up. This has 2" ease at the hip.  To make a pencil skirt you do narrow from hip to hem. I took 1/2" off each side front and back at the hem. I think that's fine and no need to add a slit or anything.

I overlaid the sloper on the 3x and 4x pattern and cut it and then laid it over the overlay piece to draw a centerline and modify the side seam to match.

I then cut out and sewed up per instructions. 

Maybe you can see what I didn't do, despite there being plenty of instructions that told me to? Yep, the waistband is WAY up my ribcage. WAY. The sloper comes to the natural waist, so you take some off of the top of the skirt to make a contoured band or to add a straight band like this. This band is meant to be worn a little lower, I think, with the top coming to the natural waist and it's about 3 1/4" inches. I might just make the band the 2" it needs for the elastic and sew back on. Not sure. I'd like to be able to wear things tucked in so I'll have to figure it out.  Also I have this on slightly twisted. I'm going to have to make some effort to find the side seams to get this on straight.