Maxi Skirt

It seems like maxi skirts have been getting increasingly popular the last few years. I've been kind of late jumping on this bandwagon mostly because I am way super not coordinated - seriously, ask my mom, she will confirm - and I was pretty sure I couldn't walk in a long skirt without tripping and killing myself. Secondarily I like showing off my tattoos when I am not at work and nobody could see my way awesome leg tattoos in a long skirt.

I was at Jo-Ann's looking at patterns (I love for 5 for $5 sales) and I found McCall's 7130.

 

Picture of view c taken from McCall's website

I'd gone into the store thinking that some new knit skirts would be just the ticket for summer and this was the maxi pattern that finally lured me into long skirt territory. Note that it has a slit up one side, so my tattoos could still be displayed. 

See, nice slit up to the knee. Also, I should have ironed it before I took pictures, but oh well. 

And here it is in all it's long glory. It's sort of hard to tell in the picture but the skirt it made in panels. I wish I could have gotten a good picture of me actually wearing it because it's much cuter that way. 

I did have to make a few modifications to the pattern. I made a size 16 and while I think the fit through the hips was perfect - any tighter and I would have had serious VPL problems - the waist didn't fit at all. It was huge and because it was actually designed to fold over it ended up being really bulky looking under a t-shirt. It pretty much added about 15 pounds that I really don't need around my gut. I sort of wish I had taken pictures so I could illustrate my point about the bad fit, but mostly I'm glad I didn't because I really don't need those pictures floating around. 

To solve the waist problem I first cut the waistband in half so instead of folding over it just sits straight at my natural waist. That wouldn't have worked if I had ever intended to wear it as a sleeveless dress like I was supposed to be able to, but since I am not into the sleeveless look I didn't mind losing the "two in one" nature. 

It was still to big to actually hold itself up at that point though. I ended up also adding a piece of 1" elastic (because it's what I had laying around). I didn't sew a tight channel for the elastic, it's pretty much just floating in the nearly four inches of waistband. So far I haven't had any problems with the elastic twisting or sliding around, so I'm calling it good. 

As you can kind of see if my picture of the slit I ended up hemming it by nearly four inches too. If you are leggy and tall this pattern would totally still work for you. I am 5'7" so I'm not exactly short, but most of my height comes from my torso so I'm not too surprised that ended up with extra fabric in the hem. 

Bonus: I totally haven't tripped over the hem yet. although one of my nieces did point out that I lift the skirt when I am going up and down stairs/hills. She totally laughed at me when I told her it was to keep from tripping.