A Knit Skirt Knock-off
Monday, January 9, 2012 at 9:37PM 
I've been working on this skirt for several months. It has been an off-and-on project, one where the design/drafting stage took ten times longer than the construction. My inspiration came from Garnet Hill, a catalog which provides beautiful pictures of stylish clothes. I liked this skirt so much I debated ordering it but decided I could probably recreate it with a little work.
It took three tries to get the proportions/angles right on this skirt, with as many muslins. I began with Pamela's Patterns' Magic Pencil Skirt. I made a muslin and fitted this skirt (I had to adjust the width/length of some of the darts) and then made a full sized pattern (as opposed to one cut on the fold) and drew in an angled hemline.
The lower flounce portion was trickier. I turned to my Pattern Master Boutique program and used the Pattern Editor feature which allows for computer aided drafting of pattern pieces. For my first attempt I drafted a full circle flounce with a graduated depth. This didn't give me the look I was after -- I wanted more of a trumpet shape. I remembered a Neue Mode pattern with a similar look and found I had saved an online copy of the pattern piece shapes.
Using that as a guide I drafted a partial-circle flounce and made another muslin. This time the flounce was not full enough. I re-drafted the flounce again, and this time I got it right. Along the way I also changed the angle of the hem of the upper portion and the depth of the lower flounce accordingly. It also took two tries to get the narrow inset flounce the right width and fullness.
Once all of the design issues had been worked out, sewing the skirt together took very little time. I used a piece of cotton knit fabric from my stash in one of my favorite colors, a blue I would call light/bright navy. This fabric (which I bought from G Street Fabrics) has a lovely, heavy hand and drape. When I found it in my stash I knew it would be perfect for this skirt.
These pictures show the skirt with a ready-to-wear top I already owned. I'm working on another top to wear with it, too. After having this skirt on my to-do list since November, I'm happy to finally be wearing it.
