My denim knit skirt – Alabama Chanin pattern

Earlier this month I thought about making some trouser jeans for a job interview at a tech startup. But I soon realized I didn’t have enough time to make a mockup and then make the jeans without stressing out. So I decided it would be better to make a knit skirt, using the mid-length skirt pattern from Alabama Studio + Design. I’ve made it before and to save time, I’d skip the hand sewing and just sew it on my machine. So I popped over to Stonemountain & Daughter Fabrics and found this great heavyweight cotton denim knit fabric (5 percent lycra). Perfect to make a denim knit skirt!

In the above photo (taken after I washed the dried the fabric), it looks black. But in person, it looks like a dark indigo denim. You can buy this heavyweight organic cotton knit fabric in black on Stonemountain’s website. The weight feels great and it’s so soft! It was worth the price of $26.70/yard, the most I’ve ever paid for a knit fabric. All I needed was 1 1/3 yards for my denim knit skirt. The pattern calls for 1 1/4 but I got a little extra in case of shrinkage.

I used the pattern from this Alabama Chanin book, which is now out of print but you can find copies of Alabama Studio Sewing + Design on Amazon. I’ve made the bolero, a tunic, and two other mid-length skirts from this book. You can see the second skirt I hand sewed in my Toaster Sweater 2 post.

I bought the fabric on a Saturday, finished sewing it on Sunday and wore it to my interview on Monday. So that’s why I didn’t have any time to hand sew it. I rarely ever sew fabric that quickly. It usually sits in my stash for a while before I sew it.

If you’re familiar with Alabama Chanin aesthetic, it’s all about organic cotton knit fabric and hand sewing. I’ve hand sewn my other Alabama Chanin outfits but for this one, I just used a zig-zag stitch on my sewing machine. 😉

I cut size XL but because there wasn’t a lot of stretch on this denim knit fabric, I decided to increase the seam allowance to 5/8 to give my self enough ease. Then I quickly basted the skirt to check fit and took the waist in about an inch. I usually have to grade up in the hips so this wasn’t a surprise. Then I removed the basting from the side seams and zig-zagged the two front pieces together and then the two back pieces. Now I was ready for the elastic.

This skirt pattern uses foldover elastic at the waist but with this heavyweight knit fabric, I didn’t think that would be strong enough. So I looked for something similar but wider and a little more substantial. I found this soft elastic that was 1 3/8 inches wide (~3.5 cm) and wouldn’t add too much bulk. It wouldn’t fold as easily as foldover elastic but it was pliable enough to do the job.

It was a little tricky to sew it to the waist. I had to rip out my first stitches because I decided to use double-sided fusible at the waist to hold the elastic in place before sewing it. The idea was to avoid pinning the elastic. I used a wide zig-zag stitch and then tried on the skirt. If you’ve worked with knit fabric before, you can probably guess what happened. The waist was too wide and stood out from my waist. I realized I needed to slightly stretch the elastic as I sewed it – similar to sewing neck binding on the t-shirt.

So I ripped out my stitches – luckily, very easy to do because of the wide zig zag – and then used a small zig zag to sew the elastic to the wrong side, stretching it slightly as I sewed it. Then I folded it over to the right side and sewed a wide zig zag in the middle.

Here’s the wrong side of the front. You can sort of see the small zig-zag stitches just above the wide zig zag.

And here’s the right side of the front waist. This fit well.

And here’s the finished denim knit skirt, which I wore to the Bay Area Sewists meetup at Britex Fabrics last weekend with my Pilvi Coat (ponte knit) and my Toaster Sweater 2 (black French terry). It’s my all-knit ensemble! I took the photos with my iPhone and the lighting wasn’t the best because I’m standing in the shade. You can’t really see that the skirt is a dark denim, not black. In this photo the skirt blends in with the Toaster Sweater.

I used a photo timer app (gives you a countdown and lets you pick how many photos to take and how much time between each shot) and attached my phone to a tripod using the Promaster Mobile Phone Tripod Mount (affiliate link). I got mine at Adolph Gasser Photography, an independent store in San Francisco, which sadly closed last year. The tripod mount expands from 2 inches (~5 cm) to a maximum of 3.75 inches (9.5 cm). It fits my iPhone 6 and it’s battery case.

Here are a few more views of this A-line denim knit skirt. This fabric has a lot of body and not much drape so it stands out at the bottom. You can really see the silhouette of this skirt in this photo.

I got my hair cut two weeks ago – lopped off a couple of inches. It had been covering my neck before I got it cut.

Here’s a back view. It was a warm day so I didn’t wear a hat – plus new hair! It’s so nice to have my hair off my neck!

Here the denim knit skirt looks a little more like denim rather than black.

I didn’t get the job but I have a skirt I love. I know I’ll wear it all the time.