I had grand dreams when I first became pregnant that I would have time to make a few items for a maternity wardrobe – maternity clothes are pretty expensive and I’d been wanting to learn how to sew with stretch knits. I pawed through my stash of patterns and picked out a number of items that looked like they would work for the earlier parts of pregnancy before my belly got too big. I even planned out that I would be sewing through the basketball season when my husband was going to be occupied watching the Warriors play. Fast forward to morning sickness and exhaustion, remodeling the house, planning our trip to Asia and just trying to organize the house for the baby, and now I’m 9 ½ months pregnant – where did the time go?!

However, I did make one skirt I’d been mentally designing for awhile. I wanted to make something that would be flexible enough for both pregnant and non-pregnant states, with a very adjustable waistband that would work with a multitude of sizes. I thought of this after a friend described the construction of historic Chinese gowns (also preggo-friendly, as it turns out), and the construction of Japanese hakama pants, which you may have commonly seen on samurai based anime or movies.

Here’s my sketch of how I wanted it to look:

I’m quite happy with how it turned out! Here I am wearing it – and my goodness, can we say down to the deadline? The day before we took photos I had a false alarm and was at the hospital thinking I was about to go into labor!

Does this make my butt look big? I guess a 9.5 month pregnant woman shouldn’t really ask that question.  Actually, looking at these photos I see it doesn’t overemphasize the bump or bum area – whew!  Wearing the skirt with heels helps to lengthen the body (for the purposes of photos only – these days my feet are pretty swollen so all I really wear is flip flops when I have to wear shoes at all).  And a few sitting photos, where you can see the pleating along the sides.  Thanks goes to Simply Mi for the photos!

And here it is on my mannequin to demonstrate what it ought to look like a non-pregnant body, and I have cleverly dressed her in the same outfit so I could have a good idea of how it’ll look on me in a few more months.  Ah, my mannequin, her waist is slimmer than mine even pre-pregnancy.  But I like how cute it looks!  And in this photo you can see the remnants of our baby shower decorations – too adorable not to keep around to add interest to blank walls!

This skirt could be quite versatile so I would like to make another one or two to use up some fun border prints I have. You can wear it either way forward but I prefer to have the longer side to the back so it can create that nice flattering fold across the front.  When I was trying it on, the long side by itself would also make a cute pleated apron bottom, so I plan to do exactly that to use up some cute border fabrics.  What do you think, ladies?  Would this be something you’d wear while pregnant or just around in every day life?

Next post, I’ll go into some details about how I put this skirt together.  Till then!