Maple Skirt by Gracious Threads… Hacked!

So I decided to do something I pretty much never do. I hacked a pattern!

Normally if I make any changes to a pattern I’m sewing it’s pretty minor. Maybe do a little colour blocking, something like that.

But for the Maple Skirt Tour, Jess of Gracious Threads was encouraging us to do a hack if we wanted so I figured I’d do something that was a little bit out of my comfort zone.

I’ll say it right off the bat, I messed up my buttonholes. I needed to shift the buttons down a little because the third button would have been right on the line where the two fabrics join, and then I thought I measured well, but apparently I went all buttonhole happy and didn’t keep distances the same.

It’s a fairly simple hack. I basically cut the skirt pattern pieces at about the third mark. Then measured along the bottom cut edge of each piece (the front and back); took that measurement and multiplied it by 3 to make the new width measurements. The length was the length of the bottom 2/3’s of the skirt pieces plus seam allowance. Probably doesn’t make much sense, I’ll try to get a picture of what I mean. For the back gathered piece I had to cut out two pieces to get the width I wanted.

For the jeans top part of the skirt I actually upcycled an old pair of my husbands’ jeans. Since I made a size 3 I still have quite a bit of jeans left to work with.

The belt loops are the actual belt loops from the jeans. For the back piece I cut from close to the bottom of one leg and centered the fold line of the pattern piece on the side seam of the jeans.

I was actually quite impressed that my sewing machine managed to sew through all the those layers! It had tiny fits trying to sew over the belt loops on the seams but otherwise it survived! Yay!

Even though I messed up on the buttonholes, I’m still quite happy with it. The topstitching with the jeans thread really helps I think. Both my girls like the skirt. Luckily SillyBean is super skinny so she can fit into it. She can wear it over leggings, it will look so cute.

It was a fun hack. Next time though when I cut the bottom part off the skirt I’ll add the curve of the original hemline to the top part of the skirt pattern piece (the jeans part). Maybe then it won’t hike up so much in the back like in the pic below.

I have plans to sew up an original version soon. I just need to clear up a few other projects on my sewing table first!

Check out the other stops on the Maple Skirt Sewalong Tour by clicking the pic below!!

I hope you enjoyed my hack!