Colourblock Skirt + Tutorial

I've been wanting to make a colourblock skirt for ages and had it on my list of things to make from when I went fabric shopping with a list. It still ticks the box for not being a print but I love the mix of colours.

To be honest this skirt was a long time in the making and I learnt a LOT from the process. Mostly that I'm bad at maths. I drafted the measurements for this skirt weeks ago and sewed up the first version a muslin which had all french seams and tidy topstitching. I was really excited to try it on before installing the zipper but found it was waaay too short for my liking. Also I'd managed to add a zip seam allowance to the back as well as the front (??!!). Because apparently that's how I roll. Zips right down the front of my skirts. Yep. Also I learnt during this process that while french seams are awesome and tidy and should be used on all projects, they should not actually be used on colourblocked skirts. They made the seams bulky so the pleats kinda got all weird. Some awesome people on Twitter tried to encourage me to fix it but I needed to put it aside for a while so I could work on it in the back of my mind.

I came back to the idea about a week ago. This time with improved maths. And more fabric.

I used pinking shears to cut all the pieces of fabric this time around and pressed open each of the seams so it's much lighter. I'm pretty pleased with the result and thought I might share my process for you to make your own.

Here are some diagrams I prepared earlier...

I love the result and it was definitely worth putting it to the side so I wouldn't stab the fabric with my unpicker could redraft it and make it a much better end result.