Alterations, oh my!

Alterations/repairs are bad words around these parts.  I will avoid stitching a button back onto a store bought sweater for YEARS.  It's ridiculous, but true.  I am willing to spend countless hours sewing away on a complicated project that I have made from scratch and takes months to complete, but ask me to "fix" something on a finished item and I will avoid it like the plague.

In other words, it takes a lot for me to make changes to an existing garment.  But I thought that this skirt would pair perfectly with my sweater, so I decided to make the skirt work for me, even if it meant that I would be altering instead of constructing it.

My first thought was that I could leave the zipper alone; because who wants to rip out a zipper?!  But this is a pleated skirt, not a gathered one, and that would mean that the pleats were going to get wonky if I could only take in the two side seams.

I unpicked the waistband and found a fabric that wanted to fray . . . a lot.  And the seam allowances had been trimmed down to almost nothing.

But I had come this far, so I just kept going.

This process was no where near as enjoyable as making a skirt from scratch, but it wasn't as terrible as I expected, either!

Am I going to start re-fashioning (not sure I can call this a refashion, it's probably more of an alteration)?  Definitely not. 

But this was a good exercise since it's not something that I do very often.

So what did I do, exactly?  I cannot be sure, but I believe that this skirt was meant to be worn below the natural waistline.  That type of fit just isn't my favorite, so I took in the waistband significantly.

This skirt also has side pockets, which I really didn't want to mess with, so I had to fudge the side seam pleats/pockets.

Instead of cutting the pockets, I just tucked the excess into the pleats and increased the take-in of the pleats themselves to make the skirt fit into the smaller waistband.  I also took up the hem to a more flattering length for me.  This also required hemming the lining which includes a bit of netting to help the skirt poof, but that was an easy fix.

As I said, this kind of project is never likely to be my favorite, but I do think the time and energy was worth it in the end.  And another pink hued skirt is always welcome in my closet!