Today I’ve got my review of the Fibre Mood Crystal Skirt.

So I will start off with the usual disclaimer: I received this pattern for free from Fibre Mood in exchange for sharing it in conjunction with the release of the edition of the magazine in which it features. Printing costs, fabric and time were all my own.

Plus I own a Fibre Mood subscription paid out of my own pocket anyway – I just enjoy getting a pattern early!

My Fibre Mood Crystal Skirt is a size 46 (UK 18/US 14). The Crystal Skirt is available in sizing catering for a maximum waist size of 135cm/hip size of 151cm.

I have sewn this Fibre Mood Crystal Skirt out of leftover hemp denim from Blackbird Fabrics – it’s the same fabric I’ve used for this Amy Jumpsuit hack and this Reeta Shirt Dress. It feels soooo good to get a new make entirely out of leftover fabric!

(BTW, as an aside, I’m thinking of cutting off the bodice of the square neck Amy Jumpsuit and turning them into elastic waisted culottes. Seems more versatile – the square neck is turning out to be not as wearable as I had hoped!)

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Anyway, feels like free sewing to me!

My thighs don’t lie

I would say that selecting my size may have been the most challenging aspect of this make for me.

The Crystal Skirt is quite slimline but it does still have some shaping to it – it flares outwards slightly from the waist before continuing down straight until you reach the flouncy ruffle layer at the bottom.

As is often the case with a lot of patterns, there is no clear indication as to how much ease a pattern is going to have around the thighs. So when a pattern is potentially more slim fitted around the thighs, I struggle with selecting my size as a ‘pear’ shape. My waist and hips both definitely fit within size recommendations for the size 46, but the widest point of my body is 20cm or so below my hips across the thighs and is about 10cm wider than my hips. So I found it hard to get a feel from the pattern pieces as to whether I should size up to make sure I had enough room in the thighs.

I also struggle a bit to try to measure this out from flat pattern pieces as I can find it difficult to envisage at what point across my thighs a pattern piece is going to hit. Does that make any sense?

I mean that when I’m just looking at the flat pieces, I struggle to be sure at what point on my waist the final product will sit and then without that information, I don’t have an accurate idea of how far down the skirt pieces will fall…

Ok, I’m confusing myself even as I try to write.

And if you tell me to just make a muslin to test, I shall curse you with sewing demons. May your bobbin thread be perpetually tangled!

Long and short of it, for fellow pear shapes, maybe consider sizing up or grading for more room at the thigh as I ended up having to sew this with the world’s teeniest seam allowance around the thighs to get it to fit.

But it does. Phewww!

Got back?

The other thing I believe is maybe worth mentioning about this pattern is that the back and front pieces are identical. You just cut two pieces of everything.

Now, neither my front nor my back are flat, but on my body, the back half is curvier than the front and most skirt patterns account for this by making back pieces slightly larger and introducing some shaping to account for those curves.

You can see from this view, that the fit across the back on me is not great.

It is exacerbated in this photo a bit by a chunky knit being poorly tucked in – in reality it’s still wearable for sure. Nonetheless, I feel that the fit would have been much better on me – without losing the streamlined shape if the back of the skirt was a little bit wider than the front and it had a couple of small darts at the back to shape it.

I sometimes wonder whether these decisions are sometimes made based on “space available” in sewing magazines. I imagine that it significantly reduces the cost of printing the pieces for the magazine if you can just cut two of everything rather than needing back and front pieces.

Having pointed out these slight issues, I still really love this skirt. There’s something about it that just makes me feel, well, frankly, a little bit badass!

I love the way that the small pattern pieces creates the possibility for using scraps or playing with interesting patterns. It was also really easy to sew. I used one lunch break to cut it out and then it took just one mid-week evening and another lunch break to finish it all off.

Woo-hooh! I’ll spin for joy over a speedy and satisfying project.

So, while I think that the Fibre Mood Crystal Skirt pattern perhaps has a little room for improvement, my version is definitely allowed to join my gang of Fibre Mood skirt patterns I adore – like Fibre Mood Amira and Fibre Mood Alix Skirt.

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