Commercial skirt patterns are drafted for a standard body; a specific waist-to-hip ratio, a specific hip curve, and one silhouette on the envelope. When your proportions don’t match that standard, or when the silhouette you want doesn’t exist as a pattern you can buy, adjusting from someone else’s starting point is always going to fall short.
This course teaches you to work from a different starting point entirely.
You begin by drafting a skirt block from your own measurements; your waist, your hip, the curve between them. Once that block is fitted and corrected, it becomes the foundation for everything that follows: an A-line development using the dart-hinging technique, flared variations using slash-and-spread, gathered skirt constructions with curved yoke lines and considered gathering ratios, a high-waisted tapered skirt with vent and lining, and a dedicated section on waistband construction covering straight and curved variations in full.
Running through the course is a thread on fabric and grain; how different grain directions change the way an A-line hangs, how different fabric types behave when gathered, and how to use that knowledge intentionally when you’re making design decisions rather than just construction ones.
The course closes with the Elena Skirt Project: a complete designer skirt inspired by Alexander McQueen, featuring an asymmetric pencil silhouette with a flared side panel in a lined plaid or tweed fabric. Sixteen lessons taking you from the first pattern fitting through to a finished garment; every element developed from the block you built at the beginning of the course.
✅ Draft a custom skirt block from your own measurements and transfer it to a durable cardboard master
✅ Develop any skirt silhouette — A-line, flared, gathered, tapered — from a single fitted starting point
✅ Draft straight and curved waistbands with and without underwrap, and know when to use each
✅ Use fabric grain intentionally — understanding how straight, cross, and bias cuts change drape before you cut
✅ Draft a gathered yoke skirt with the proportions and gathering ratios that produce a luxurious result
✅ Complete the Elena Skirt Project — a fully lined asymmetric designer skirt drafted and made from scratch
✅ Read a designer reference and develop an original pattern from it
✅ Fit a skirt muslin, read corrections, and transfer them back to the pattern accurately
This course is for sewers who want to understand skirt construction from the ground up, not just follow a pattern. No prior experience with pattern drafting is required. Basic sewing knowledge is assumed. The course builds from the very first measurement, and the Elena Skirt project at the end is achievable for anyone who works through the preceding lessons in sequence.
If you’ve felt limited by the silhouettes available as commercial patterns, or if commercial patterns have never fit your hip-to-waist ratio well, or if you’ve wanted to take a design reference and turn it into something you actually made, this course is the process for all of that.
