Strawberry Skirt - With Pockets!

So lately I've seen some fellow sewing bloggers making up cute versions of the Hollyburn skirt. With my recent jeans fail I found myself with an awesome new t-shirt but nothing to wear it with. So at my next JoAnn's trip I kept my eyes open for some affordable fabric and lo and behold I found a linen-wanna be in my price range with a gorgeous color and texture. Since I already had thread, lining and a zipper left over from other projects, the whole thing cost me $5. YAY. 

Our budget wasn't going to allow me to spend $15 on the Hollyburn pattern, so I decided to try drafting my own knock-off. 

I'd purchased 5/8ths of a yard, which was just barely enough to make the skirt work. Honestly to do the pockets properly (see further down) I'd have needed a bit more. In the future I would get 2/3rds a yard to make another skirt like this.

Skirt pieces, waistband pieces, lining, and pocket inserts.

First the facing for the front of the pocket...

Flip the facing around -

- and iron-

- and topstitch! Originally I was going to do a lot more topstiching on the skirt, but in the end I just did the pocket openings and it looked just fine.

I didn't have enough of the linen to make the entire back of the pocket (which would show) and just barely enough to do a facing on half of it.

Pinning both sides of the pockets straight on the skirt front.

Stitching the edges together.

Then pinning and basting the top and side seams.

Looket! It's a pocket! (I've done fewer pockets than I can count on one hand. This is a biggie for me.)

Then sewing all the pieces together.

Basting the lining into the linen at the waistband seam.

I cut the waistband pieces and fused them to interfacing before cutting the interfacing out. With smaller pieces it is sometimes easier this way.

Then I tried the skirt on and realized it would fit much better with some darts in the back. Rather than sew the lining and linen darts separately, I just folded all the layers together. Lazy but it worked well with lots of pins to hold the layers in place.

Stitching in the waistband.

It's looking good!

I added the waistband lining at the top seam, sewed in the zipper, then folded down the lining and hand stitched it in to cover all the raw edges. It looks pretty snazzy!

With both of my dressforms in use it was a bit tricky to hem the skirt properly. It turned out okay, but there were a few places that look a little wonky up close that I might fix later. Maybe.

Anyhow, it was a great skirt to wear over Memorial Day Weekend. Yes, I wore it Saturday and Monday - it held up well, although it liked to get wrinkly... still, I spilled some white chocolate on it that came out perfectly with a bit of warm water, so yay for versatile!