the summer of the skirt: the Ginger, take 1

I challenged myself to start sewing clothing because I fell in love with the Ginger.  The Ginger skirt is an a-line skirt from Colette Patterns.  I'm thin but also curvy with a small waist so a-line skirts tend to fit really well and be very flattering on my frame.  I spent the past week sewing the Ginger and I have to confess that I did not fall head over heels in love with this skirt.

 (Is there anyone out there who is less photogenic than moi?  I think not.)

For sure, some of this comes from a pattern cutting problem - um, I believe I cut the wrong size waistband *eep* - and some comes from just not liking how high up on my body the skirt fits. With such a high waistband (and I went with option 3 instead of skirt option 1 or 2 that have even high waistbands) I kind of feel like I'm all boob.

I struggled mightily with the waistband; I had a very bizarre moment where I found myself wondering if the skirt was too big or too small.  I think what happened is that I cut the waistband out too small so when I inserted the zipper I had to line it up with the waistband, causing the skirt to be slightly too tight around my hips.  As you can see from the picture above, I added a little fabric to both sides of the zipper which allowed me to then line up the zipper with the "extra" fabric I had on the main skirt panels.  I then had to slightly take in the waistband side seams to accommodate for my small waist (it drives me bonkers when waistbands have too much extra fabric!).  So, yes, I added and subtracted the same amount of fabric from two different places in the waistband - yoiks! (o_O)  It actually ended up working out ok but man, it was a frustrating experience!

While I was kind of frustrated sewing a skirt that I had been obsessing about for months, I'm not quite ready to give up yet.  I am still leaning and still very much a novice sewist so I am sure many of my mistakes could have been avoided had I had more sewing experience.  I am going to call this Ginger version my "practice" and give it another try, hopefully learning from mistakes!