Second hand re-size

What do you do when you find a really nice cotton skirt in the op-shop but it's a size too big?  

Well of course you attack it with your unpicker and your sewing machine to get the perfect fit.

I found this beautiful and light "Colorado" brand skirt in my local oppy and fell in love with the green floral print and the black border.  Despite it being a size 14 and despite it falling off me I bought it anyway.  It sat around for a few weeks while I considered what to do with it to make it fit.  It had a back zipper closure and a lining of white cotton, I could sense possibilities but couldn't quite work out a way forward.  I kept pinching in the sides and knowing that it would look really hack to just sew up the side seams a bit tighter which would have nasty flow on effects for bunchy lining and fabric volume at the waist.  I told myself: "Come on Caroline, you do so much sewing, you can do something smarter than that!"  Then I had a eureka moment and I picked out the zipper and sewed up the lining and the back seams to the waist and then sewed the lining to the skirt front where they met at the upper edge of the skirt.  Now I had a skirt with no closures, but still too big.

Noticing that the facing of the waistband was wide enough to accommodate a nice wide piece of elastic if I made it into a casing, I sewed a seam around the waist of the skirt where the facing met the inner lining, picked open a gap at the back seam and threaded in my elastic.  Adjust to fit, sew elastic ends together, poke back inside casing and slip stitch the opening closed and you have yourself a new skirt with a fit just perfect for you.

A great sense of satisfaction, I love a good save of something old into something new.