Today I’m sharing my review of the Victory Patterns Madeleine Skirt.

You know, most of the time, I like to think that my me-made wardrobe is pretty well thought out – particularly in recent years. I think about the gaps in my wardrobe. I think about the colours I wear most. I think about needs and practicality.

Most of the time!

This time, however, well, I’m going to be honest with you.

I purchased a gorgeous black with gold polka dot cardigan from Sezane and fell in love with it. But I realised with dismay that the only thing in my wardrobe that matched that cardigan were black trousers.

Which were nice, but, you know, a bit boring. And that was just one matching garment. And, well, I wanted more items I could wear my lovely new cardigan with.

So I did as any self-respecting sewist would do.

I made a new skirt for the sole purpose of coordinating with my cardigan. In true “old lady who swallowed a fly” style, I have grown my wardrobe just for the sake of justifying the addition of a sparkly new cardigan.

#sorrynotsorry

In my defence, I did try to minimise wastage by using deep stash patterns and fabric for this one. The fabric was leftover from my ill-fated attempt at leather look culottes (Yes, even that phrase sounds odd, now that I write it, I really should have known better). It is a coated denim which I bought back from an in-person visit to the Fabric Store in Adelaide quite a few years ago.

In that linked blog post, I talk about how totally horrible the fabric is to wear and use. I had kind of hoped that as a skirt, it would be less annoying.

Truth is, it’s not. It’s still very thick and noisy and gross to wear! In addition, it sticks to my tights like crazy so I need to find some kind of slip solution to make this garment really wearable!

So sometimes when you use a fabric that’s been sitting around for years, you end up getting reminded of the fact that there’s a reason you haven’t used the fabric!!!!

And the pattern had been in my stash for years – in fact I had printed it for intended sewing exactly 2.5 years earlier but had somehow never gotten around to sewing it! I don’t even remember anymore what fabric I had intended to use to sew it.

I actually had been tossing up between two patterns I had in my stash for making my leather look skirt – it was between the Victory Patterns Madeleine and the Deer and Doe Azara Skirt. On the latter, however, I was dismayed to discover that I have sized out of the paper copy of this pattern that I had in my collection. I think it has since been released in an extended size range, but this made the decision easy for me and I decided to go with the Victory Patterns Madeleine Skirt.

In this version, you will see that I am actually missing one of the key features of the Madeleine Skirt, which are detachable braces. I had actually really want to make them but I simply didn’t have enough fabric. I didn’t even have enough fabric to cut the waistband out as a single piece.

Maybe in a future version I’ll be able to sew the braces, but for now I just kept it very simple!

My body measurements had me at slightly above a size 14 at the waist and a 12 at the hips. I decided to cut at halfway between a 14 and 16 at the waist and then grading down to a 14 at the hip. After putting my skirt front and back together, there was actually plenty of room at the waist so I ended up taking it in about a centimetre at each side seam.

This Victory Patterns Madeleine Skirt does exactly what I wanted it to do.

It was a simple and easy sew. It looks perfect with my cardigan.

It has some of the biggest and dreamiest pockets I have ever sewn.

My only regret is that it somehow took me 2.5 years between printing it and sewing it!

Still, sometimes, you just need a pretty sparkly polka dot cardigan, to make you realise what you really need in life!