A Scrappy A-Frame

I’ve long admired the patterns made by Blueprints for Sewing, a small pattern company creating garments inspired by architectural forms. The Geodesic Pullover has been a quiet staple in the Instagram sewing world, for instance, and I’ve always loved the practical, kind-of-queer styling of the A-Frame Skirt. So I was really excited to hear that Blueprints was planning to expand their size range and that I could finally make their patterns! I don’t test very often, but I jumped on the chance to test the A-Frame skirt.

Testing happened over the summer, when I was feeling a little burnt out and broke, so I decided to raid my stash of leftover scraps and only use what I already had. Luckily, I have a predictable color palette. Getting the pieces to fit on the scraps I had took some finagling — and at least one piece is slightly off grain — but I love the finished result.

I made a size L at the hips (53″) graded to a size J at the waist (40″). The instructions helpfully come with details on grading between sizes — follow those! I didn’t, full of hubris, and only realized after cutting that the reason there are instructions is because it’s not so straightforward because of the way the side panels are constructed. I managed to fudge mine to work, and all was well in the end.

I love this skirt. I used my seated measurements so the waist is perhaps a little looser than needed – I might amend that in future versions. But, it feels just as comfy and practical as I could wish for, something I never thought I’d be able to say about a pencil skirt! I’m wearing it here with the Herrera top from Pom Pom Magazine, made for me by my lovely partner Morgan.