A Stitching Odyssey: Drafting a skirt pattern

Waaaaay back at the start of February you all blew me away with your kind comments about my self-drafted skirt. It's also waaaaay back then that I promised you a bit of a 'how to' regarding drafting a skirt like this. I'm sorry it's taken so long, but I hope you'll agree that it's better late than never...

In my pattern drafting class, we're using Winifred Aldrich's Metric pattern cutting for women's wear, which includes a basic pencil skirt pattern. The pattern pieces should end up looking like my yellow ones below. Of course there are many other pattern drafting books you can use instead and loads of online tutorials - a really quick Google search revealed similar-looking methods from BurdaStyle and the lovely Ooobop.

If you follow a similar method to mine, your finished skirt or muslin should end up looking like the one below. If you get the fit right this classic pencil skirt shape can become a wardrobe staple in itself, but it also lends itself beautifully to variation.

For my personal drafting experience I wanted to challenge myself in terms of the skills I'd need and in terms of a style that would take me out of my comfort zone. And I knew exactly what I wanted to create, as soon as I saw the skirt below on Pinterest.

To get an idea of how this would possibly work and what pattern pieces I would need, I traced some quarter scale models of my basic skirt block and marked out the new design lines.

I then cut the quarter scale pattern pieces out, to make sure I didn't miss anything or make any glaringly obvious mistakes. This is quite a handy step, as it should highlight any possible problems at an early stage.

With my chosen skirt design, proportions are everything. So I decided to draw out my design on my original muslin. This was such a useful exercise as I kept trying it on as I went along, allowing me to make adjustments and get the proportions of each pattern piece just right.

Once I was happy with the proportion of my pattern pieces, I re-traced my original pencil skirt block and then copied the markings from my muslin onto it. And voila, behold the actual pattern pieces below in all their glory!!! Although, you may have noticed the absence of a pocket pattern piece...that's because I cheated...shhhh! Basically, after all that exhausting drafting I thought I'd let myself off by using and adapting the Lonsdale pocket pattern piece!

You've also probably noticed some folds on my skirt yoke pattern pieces. In order to have a nicely shaped yoke without darts, you just pinch the darts out of your pattern pieces. So you would trace the yoke pieces using your skirt block - darts and all - and then just pinch/fold them out like magic. Sexy shape sans darts...easy, no?

And that my friends, is how you can get a skirt like this! I hope you find this 'how to' useful - I'm not claiming to be a drafting expert or that I'm doing things 100% correctly, but this has been an honest account of how I drafted my pretty little skirt. 

If you have any further questions or anything is unclear, let me know and I'll do my best to clarify.