Fibre Mood ‘Jutta’ skirt

I bought the latest issue of Fibre Mood on a whim; I didn’t look too closely at the contents, I just saw a couple of patterns I liked and thought it was good value. I decided to make the Jutta skirt first because it looked easy and had an adjustable waist, so if the instructions were terrible or the sizing was off, it wouldn’t cause problems.

For the fabric, I chose this bottle green polyester peachskin from Fabric Godmother. I didn’t notice it was polyester (a fabric I usually shy away from as I’m incredibly static!) until I’d bought it, but so far it’s only been static once or twice. It’s hard to capture in photos, but this fabric has a sheen to it and catches the light beautifully. Plus, it doesn’t wrinkle- at all! Maybe it’s because I’m used to sewing with natural fibres, but this kind of blew my mind.

(Side note: do you see those small white dots on the skirt? That’s where a bird shat on me. The very first time I wore it out. This is the problem with living somewhere full of pigeons!)

There are a couple of fundamental things about this pattern (and by extension, all Fibre Mood patterns) that annoyed me. Firstly, there aren’t any seam allowances included. I always find this irritating; it’s such an easy thing for them to add, why not?

In a similar vein, there was one section of the pattern that needed to be partially interfaced, and instead of including a pattern piece for the interfacing (which was a different shape than the larger piece it was being attached to) there was a very faint shaded in area on the line drawing to show you roughly what shape to cut. This didn’t cause any problems for me, but for a beginner it’s potentially confusing. It just felt lazy on the pattern company’s part.

When it came to actually sew the skirt, the instructions were fine. Not amazing, but usable. I made things more difficult for myself by topstitching the diagonal pocket immediately after under stitching it. This is how I normally sew diagonal pockets, but I really should have noticed that this was different, as it doesn’t join a waistband but continues up to form a casing. I ended up unpicking the first part of my topstitching, and making the next few steps a lot harder. Here’s a glimpse at some of the awkwardness I was dealing with:

I had to re-read the instructions for this part several times before it made sense (still not sure it does…). I don’t know how much of this was due to my topstitching mistake or if it was an unnecessarily complicated construction method. Either way, I’ll be sticking to diagonal pockets with waistbands from now on!

Part of the reason I chose this pattern was because of the adjustable waist- no need to make a toile or worry about fit. There are some aspects of the fit that I’m happy with; I love the way it looks from the front and how it’s fitted over my hips.

However, to stop it from falling down I have to pull the waist tie so tightly it creates a whole load of excess fabric across my stomach. You can’t really see in these photos, but in real life there is a lot of fabric gathered into the centre front. At first I hated how this looked, but now I just view it as an interesting new silhouette that I haven’t tried before. That being said, it does kind of limit what tops I can wear with it; they have to be fairly fitted in order to balance out the skirt fullness.

Whilst I didn’t love making this skirt, I’m really happy with the finished product. I won’t be buying any more issues of Fibre Mood, but I may make one or two of the easier patterns from this issue (got to get my money’s worth!).

Pattern: ‘Jutta’ skirt from issue 5 of Fibre Mood magazine
Size/Fit: I made a size XS, which was a bit too big.
Fabric: Bottle green polyester peach skin from Fabric Godmother (Sold out)
Sewing Time: A couple of afternoons.
Quality of instructions: Okay, but not great.
Difficulty: Confident beginner.
Adjustments/Hacks: None, except for my topstitching fail!
Make again? Probably not, although if I did I’d take a chunk of fabric out of the centre front.