Anthropologie inspired skirt refashion (2 of 52)

Only two weeks in and one refashion a week poses a challenge. Flu has slowed me down during the week, and although I finished the project, I couldn't write the post timely. However, as the fever broke for a bit, I got to posting this one.
 
As I have lost some weight by now (40 something lbs) I am pretty much pushed into remodeling most of my clothes. Most of those I used to wear only because they were big enough to fit me, so I wouldn't really care for refashioning them. However, I got a number of pieces from my mother, who has also lost weight over the past few years, so I got a pile of tailored skirt suits and skirts from her.

One of the pieces I got from her I really liked, but our bodies (and style for that matter) were and still are quite different.

This is the B&W houndstooh skirt I started off with:

The skirt was ok at the waist, but the hips were too big and overall it was too long. As these problems required the skirt to be fully dissembled and then re-assembled, I wanted to have something more then just it's size being adjusted... so I thought and I remembered a very cool skirt I saw on anthropologie site. This one:

Anthropologie Houndstooth Ponte Pencil Skirt

So I thought, I should be able to do something similar with this mine... all I needed was a two-sided zipper and some ribbon. Digging through my sewing accessories' stash yielded exactly what I needed! 

As the first step, I have dissembled the skirt by picking all the stitches.

Next, the skirt needed to be steam ironed to straighten previous seam lines and to create the new one. Now, I have turned the back of the skirt and it became the front, where they would be conjoined by the zipper. The zipper needed to be carefully pinned and then basted to the skirt.

Pinned and basted zipper - right side

Pinned and basted zipper - wrong side

After I have secured the zipper and it looked neat, I have machine stitched it. Next, I tried it on and pinned and stitched. And did it again. And again. After the third recursion it looked good. I have then cut of zig-zagged the raw edges on the side seams and ironed the skirt. Apparently, steam ironing of the garment throughout the process helps a lot especially if you are sewing with fabrics that have character (opposed to stretchy fabrics).

Then, I have pinned and stitched decorative ribbon I found in my stash... which I remembered came from the Lush Cosmetics gift. They do really lovely gift packaging! And planet friendly, as well!

Next up, I have trimmed the end of the waistband where the button hole was, ironed it and pinned to the waist of the skirt. Stitched it and ironed the waist so that the black fabric is inside and houndstooth on the outside. Finally, I pinned the lining to the waistband and ironed the whole thing. The inside of the skirt waist looks like this:

And this is the final result, tada!