Skirts...

 Last fall, McCall's introduced this pattern:

This is McCall's 8248.  It is a pleated skirt in three lengths. it is very reminiscent of skirts from the late 80s to the early 90s.    It is not is a straight forward pleated skirt.  I purchased two fabrics for this skirt - here.  One fabric performed much better than the other fabric.  Here are the skirts:

This fabric is 100% rayon challis.  It should have been the perfect fabric for this skirt but was not.  It did produce a beautiful, swishy skirt but spend weeks hanging out on a skirt hanger with the hopes that the stretching would end.  I think every inch stretched.  I finally gave up on this skirt.  I could not get it to hang straight.  I tried four times to get the hem reasonably straight.  It has been a long time since I had a wader.

This fabric is 100% cotton sateen.  This fabric behaved better.  The skirt is not a drapey or swishy as the rayon challis.  I did not have to deal with the terrible stretching with this fabric.

Pattern Information:

As I stated earlier, this is not a standard pleated skirt.  Every piece is on the bias.  Now, you would expect this waistband to be on a bias because it is curved.  The seam that the zipper is on is also on the bias.  I really had a hard time with the challis.  I have never seen so much stretching with a fabric.  On the cotton sateen, I interfaced the entire zipper area.  There are no instructions on finishing the waistband.

Overall, my struggle with the skirts was due to the stretching.  I did not like the way the instructions had you do the zipper.  I did follow pattern instructions with the challis skirt but with the sateen skirt I followed the instructions that came with the zipper.  The results were better even if it had an extra step.

This is the last of the "winter" sewing.  I do think that I can wear this skirt as it warms up by just changing the tops and shoes.  

Happy Stitching!