Remember that black skirt I sewed last spring that was a bit of a fail? It was Purl Soho’s Gathered Skirt for All Ages pattern, and it was a perfectly cute skirt — I just didn’t like it on me. However, I continue to think it’s an adorable pattern for a little girl, so I offered to make one for my niece. We picked out the fabric when she was here last summer — this sweet cotton double-gauze, don’t know who makes it — and I just finally got around to sewing it up! (Bad aunt. Very bad aunt.)

Of course, there were mods:

– Niece was at camp at the time, but my sister measured the waist of a skirt in her closet which matched the largest of the pattern sizes (“12 years”, 25-inch elastic), but given that I still think it’s too much fabric, I cut the “8 to 9-year” size, with a 30″ waistband, to go with the 25″ elastic from the larger one.

– Still felt like those main panels were alarmingly wide, and remembered I had wanted to lengthen it (oops), so I turned the main panels on their sides, and the original height became the width — a drastic reduction in the measurement there, from 26 wide to 16 wide for each, or a total of 20″ of circumference removed. Then I cut them to about 18″ long.

– Since I wasn’t doing anything contrasty with the pockets, I just cut the side panels as one long piece and folded for the pocket, rather than seaming two pieces together.

– To reinforce the top (folded) edge of the pockets, I pressed a strip of fusible interfacing between the layers, and top-stitched across it.

– I remembered last time, in the end, my elastic didn’t fit into the casing. So this time I cut it 3.5″ wide instead of 3″ — worked out perfectly.

– And I also French seamed everything (and top-stitched it down) so it looks as nice on the inside as the outside.

It’s super cute, although I think I may have slightly overdone it on volume elimination — we’ll see whether she can walk in it! But seeing this one makes me want to try it again in my size, with the volume somewhere between this and the original.

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PREVIOUSLY in 2016 FOs: Sleeveless top redux, this time with pockets!