Hey folks, I am back with a little pattern review for a new skirt I made recently. I have been MIA from the blog for a while, but recently I felt I wanted to start writing again. Now I am back and I want to put a few words down about this pattern that has been so popular within the sewing community on Instagram. And now that I made it, I can totally see why.

Pattern Name: Henrietta Skirt

Pattern company: Spaghetti Western Sewing

Size: 3XS

Personal highlights: Great silhouette, easy to sew pattern, great for hacking  

 This is my first Henrietta skirt I made a few weeks ago in off white crisp linen. It screams summer and I feel great wearing it. It is a big skirt but not heavy in this fabric. The front and back flat fronts add a bit of elegance but the side gathered panels add a bit of drama. The waist is gathered which makes it a very fast to make garment.  

Whenever I think of this skirt and imagine it styled in an outfit I imagine a woman on Italian riviera at sunset in crispy linen, with a cool straw hat or hair raised into a bun, big cool but minimal shirt tucked in, sleeves rolled up, dark colored sandals and a big bag in hand. I can not get this image out of my head and love how it looks. Not that I manage to pull it of or that I am that woman, but we can all fake it ’till we make it, right? 

I cut out the side panels wider than in the pattern and added 20 cm to each (added 10cm on fold when I was cutting them out). The fabric was of good width and since I had the extra fabric I decided to add it into the skirt for a bit of extra puff on the sides. I like how it adds a bit of fullness but not too much. It looks just how I envisioned it. I have a great tip I picked up from Instagram a while back for the gathering (but can’t recall from whom it was to link it). I am not a fan of sewing a row or two with wide straight stitch and then gathering the fabric by hand. So when I saw this hack I never looked back. The idea is to sew the fabric with the larger stitch length (I set mine at 5) as you would with the previous method, but the key is in raising the tension on the upper foot to maximum (mine is at max on 9). While sewing, the fabric is gathering in the back of the sewing foot. A little miracle. But actually physics. Gathering this way never gives you the perfect length needed in a pattern but you can easily either gather it a bit more or stretch it out as needed. It is so much quicker overall and I use it all the time for any gathering I need to do. 

I wanted to use the elastic I had at home and that one was not as wide as the pattern calls for. The pattern calls for a 4 cm elastic but I only had 3.5 cm wide at hand. It does not make much of a difference for the final garment and I really did not want to go shopping at that point. So when I was ironing the fabric for the elastic casing I just made it 0.5 cm narrower. 

The construction overall went great. The instructions are clear and easy to follow. I did not time it but I think it took me around 3 hours from cutting it out to having the final garment. I rarely finish a garment in one sitting, but this one I did 🙂

I am wearing it here with the Ultimate Dress pattern by Sew Over It made into a top in bright blue linen. Love this color combo for this all linen summer outfit.

Thank you for reading and happy sewing!

Ana