My friend Thelma donated some of her fabric from her stash to mine and part of it was this amazing stretch heavy cotton (?). When I first saw it I thought it was upholstery fabric, but I don’t think it is.

I wanted a different shaped skirt for this, and I wanted to do something vintage, but my vintage skirt patterns either had gathers (not suitable for this thick fabric) or were very straight. Cue this 1970s dress pattern, Style 4234. I don’t know where it came from as it’s too big for me, and it’s far too young for me, but I really like the skirt shape.

Feeling a bit of love for those shoes – I remember wearing ones just like it back in the ’70s.

Now I am extremely unadventurous when it comes to pattern hacking, but I was happy to give it a go. Really all I had to do was take the two skirt pieces and create a curved waistband and I was away.

Yes, well, not quite! The pattern appeared to be long enough (bit of dodgy holding against my body), but was, in fact, quite short. Consequently I just turned it up a tiny bit with some wide bias binding from my mother’s stash.

What do you think? Gorgeous fabric?

The elastic for the belt also came out of my stash – how good am I, having burgundy elastic? Must have been some sort of accident!

The zip came from my mother’s stash and this is how it looked – still attached to the fabric into which it had been inserted! Good match though…

The belt buckle also came from my stash and is really old and quite gorgeous. Not sure what the metal is?

A reasonably successful minor pattern hack, I think. I had to take the waist and hips in by about 6cms, and it fits perfectly and, because of the stretch, is really, really comfortable.

Details: Pattern is Style 4232, reworked into a skirt. The fabric came from Thelma’s stash (thanks Thel!), and everything else was sourced from within my sweatshop.

Top was ready to wear from about 5 years ago, and the shoes are Armani. Note that it was cold enough to wear thick tights today!