One of the joys of learning to sew is that it makes you see the world in a slightly different way.

Take this equation.

One Gilt Group Daily Deal maxi skirt (RRP, $100):

Equals:

3 yards of stripy jersey from HartsFabrics.com

Plus:

One jersey maxi skirt tutorial from the marvelously pregnant author of Elle Apparel! 

Continue to solve for that equation, readers, and what do you get?

EQUALS !

Yes, this was my first ever ‘ready to wear’ rip-off! And quite proud of myself too, I am.
The pattern itself was super easy, just requiring four pieces, and two pattern blocks that I made from butcher paper (because trust me, I’ll be making this again). You read all the time on sewing blogs “oh this took me only 3 hours” but this ACTUALLY DID.

The main time was spent trying to get the stripes to line up. Because the pieces are slightly A line they couldn’t match up perfectly horizontally, but I wanted them to meet even though it was at a slight angle.

I used a tutorial from Colette on stripe matching, which made a lot of sense. Step 1 is make sure when you fold your fabric that the stripes are aligned. Knit fabric tends to shift, so I essentially had to pin the fabric together on every single stripe to make sure it matched up:

Then, when I had one piece done, I laid it back down on the fabric in line with the stripes, and used it as a template to make the next piece exactly the same. If you look really carefully at the photo below you can see that there’s a piece on the top, then butcher paper, then the fabric underneath that I’m about to cut:

And here is the toe-skimming result!

And it goes really well with a little purple cardi which my Mum bought me recently, so yay for prescient Mums!