Juliette Skirt

I had a fab experience I had sewing up the new Juliette Skirt ahead of it’s launch as a part of Ready to Sew’s latest collection of patterns! It’s up against some stiff competition, but I think that Juliette, a high waisted, A-line mini skirt, perfectly suited to leather or faux leather/suede, might just be my favourite Ready to Sew make yet!

The PDF pattern is layered, so you can select only your size/sizes before printing, and the instructions offer a playlist and click through tutorials to provide extra help for some of the trickier techniques. This pattern is marked as intermediate level, but if you’re confident enough to try out a fair bit of topstitching then I’m sure it would be really manageable for an advanced beginner, particularly in a ‘friendlier’ fabric such as denim or cotton drill.

A new and exciting option for Juliette is that the pattern offers half sizes! The half sizes go up in 2cm increments, making it so much easier to get the right fit – I made a size 39 and it was spot on.

The pattern offers two suggested lay plans – one using only one fabric, and the other for a colour blocked version. I made the single fabric version with a faux leather, and it uses less than a metre!

The skirt was a breeze to put together, despite a few difficulties with stubborn, bulky pleather. I love the detail and finish, particularly in the back. I’d never inserted a zip using this method before – grateful for the click-through tutorial in the pattern! – so it was cool to learn a new technique. It worked particularly well for creating a neat finish with a tricky fabric.

I found that the pockets gaped when I tried it on before joining the waistband (I have a narrow waist and quite curvy hips which probably explains this) but they were really easy to adjust and baste back in place.

I can’t wait to make another Juliette Skirt and would definitely recommend the pattern.
There are lots more pictures of my Juliette and a discussion about leather vs faux leather in the blog post here: http://www.magnificentthread.com/2018/03/ready-to-sew-juliette-skirt.html