So, are you ready to join me on a French flight of fancy?

Sometimes you just need a quick sewing win, right?

I just wanted to make something easy in pretty colours that I knew I would be happy to swish around in. In fabric that I knew would be a winner

Enter: ‘le 403‘.

I’ve always admired DP Studio patterns but I’ve felt that they are a little bit too ‘out there’ and fashion forward for me.

But this particular pattern is one that I’ve had my eye on ever since I did my Skirt Series last year. I’ve just been waiting for the perfect fabric colour combination to make it happen (more on that below!).

In case you’re not that familiar with DP Studio, they are a French sewing pattern company with a very interesting and distinct aesthetic. In case it’s confusing, the patterns have numbers as names in the French version of the website (hence, le 403), but when you view the website in English, the numbers disappear and you have description-titles instead.

So this one becomes ‘skirt with godets and seam details’ (and it seems to appear on the website twice for some strange reason. Perhaps, like me, they simply really like it!).

And the instructions come in both French and English. Although, they’re not great in either language…

Thanks, Meter Meter

So, I’m lucky enough to be able to say that this lovely fabric was provided to me by Meter Meter free of charge.**

It’s heavyweight tencel twill in their sustainable MeetMILK collection, which I’ve already used and loved previously for my Cascade Skirt. I guess there’s a theme emerging, this fabric just makes the perfect swishy swoony skirt!!

At the time of posting, however, Meter Meter seem to be clearing their stock of this lovely tencel twill and replacing it with a similar weight sanded tencel twill. They say it’s new and improved.

Which I find hard to imagine since it’s already so lovely, but I can’t wait to try the new stuff in the future. It seems to come in more colours, too!!!

Just a quick word on fabric requirements. The pattern envolope says you need 2.7metres of fabric for this skirt, but that is NOT with any colour blocking. The fact that all pieces (well, except the waistband!) are cut on the bias, makes this a pretty fabric-munching pattern.

In case anyone out there is thinking of colour blocking it, for my particular layout, with navy for main skirt and middle godet, mustard for largest top godet and pink for the lower godet, I had 2 metres of the navy, 1 metre of mustard and half a metre of the pale pink.

And that was juuuuust barely enough.

Grain! Grain! Grain!

If I had one piece of advice to offer anyone sewing this skirt it is: pay very close attention to grain.

I’m going to make a confession here that is probably going to get me thrown out of the sewist club.

I sometimes (often) just eyeball grain.

I’ve gotten to a point where, when I do properly measure it out, it is usually where I had eyeballed it as being, so I’ve developed a bit of a habit of just going with my gut.

Le 403, however, is basically a circle skirt in 9 pieces. So absolute precision is actually quite important. In other words, I really should have gotten out my ruler.

When I had my pieces all cut out and sewn together, I almost didn’t have a single notch that lined up anywhere! Even though the pieces are very well-notched!!

Also, some of my panels ended up being literally inches longer than the pieces they were attached to.

And my waistband was about 4 inches shorter than the skirt itself.

Ummm, ooops!

In addition to my own cutting inaccuracies and the strong likelihood that I cut off-grain in significant areas, I imagine that since the tencel is a twill weave, it may be particularly susceptible to stretching out in the parts that are cut on the diagonal.

But there was no harm done, since my 403 skirt was huugge and very long anyway. I cut it down to the size of the waistband at the waist and then I cut around the bottom of the skirt to even it out.

French sizing weirdness…

Apart from Deer and Doe, which seem to consciously market for a more English-speaking US-based market, I always have a slight feeling of dread when I sew a French pattern and have to figure out my size.

In the end, I chose my size based on the waist measurement given, which, for this pattern, is basically the size of the finished waistband.

So, anyway, my skirt is a size 46.

Word of warning, that’s the second to largest size the pattern comes in. So, this is not at all a size-inclusive range.

Le 403: Sewing experience

I sewed most of my le 403 skirt on my overlocker, except for the zipper installation and back seam.

It was a pretty easy peasey painless project.

I have to say though, that, for the most part, I didn’t really use the instructions.

I found them pretty useless.

2, 1, 5, 3, 7, 6, 9…

Where to even begin?

The instructions refer to numbers of pattern pieces, which aren’t actually written anywhere on the pattern pieces themselves.

Which makes perfect sense…

Just in case anyone is googling this in frustration in the future, here is the key!

Piece 6 in the instructions is marked “9/9” or “Piece Side 3” on the actual pattern piece. Piece 5 in the instructions is the one marked “8/9” or “bandside 2”. Piece 4 in the instructions is marked “7/9” or “bandside 1”.

As I said.

Perfect, frickin’ sense.

Also, the pattern layouts provided are useless. It’s only for one size and then basically says ‘for other sizes you may need to cut differently’. The waistband piece is clearly marked ‘cut on fold’ but then the pattern layout provided cuts it as two pieces.

But wait, there’s still more…

The pattern instructions say, you can finish the skirt with either a facing or a two centimetre wide folded hem.

But there is no facing piece in the pattern.

So the presumption, since it’s not actually stated, is that they are suggesting you draft a facing yourself.

Ummm, sorry, but no!

With the shipping cost, this pattern is probably the single most expensive indie pattern I’ve every purchased. So sorry, in addition to dealing with incompresible instructions, I’m really do NOT expect to be required to draft my own hem facing!!!

I just did a little micro-hem, as this is my preferred way to finish a circle skirt.

I promise it was lots of fun, with all those colour changes to take into account…

On the upside, I was kept amused by the frequent little ‘ lost-in-translation’ moments where things had been translated from the French so as to be entirely intelligible but somehow just a little bit off at the same time: like “thread grain” or “manufacturing process” for instructions.

Take even the title in English ‘ Skirt with godets and seam details’. However, there aren’t actually any particularly unique details including in the seams. Although I guess you could topstitch them if you wanted…

Up or down?

One other recommendation, is that the instructions seem to call for (sorry, I say seem because it just wasn’t all that clear to me) assembling your skirt pieces by starting at the top and then attaching the pieces downwards.

I found it more effective to start at the bottom because it resulted in less overworking of the bias-cut parts of the skirt pieces.

Another little tip, is that, for most of the godet pieces, the pieces are slightly asymmetrical. So make sure you mark well what is the front end of the piece and what is the back.

Swirly whirly goodness

So while I’m sharing all the above gripes in the spirit of sewist solidarity – that hope that one day I may save a fellow sewist some pain – I absolutely love this skirt.

And while I’m not necessarily holding my breath to jump into the muddle-headed wonder of another expensive DP Studio right away, they do still have a few patterns that I find interesting enough to return at some point.

But, in my opinion, these are crazy expensive patterns that you buy because you just can’t live without that unique wardrobe piece. Don’t buy them expecting clear, easy, hand-holding instructions!

But anyway, I think that’s it from me. Now, I’m just going to twirl around in all my favourite colours at once!!!

** Disclosure: on this blog, I will always tell you if I have received a pattern and/or fabric free of charge, rather than paid for it myself. Apart from receiving the fabric free from Meter Meter, I received no remuneration for this post and Meter Meter did not ask me to write this post, nor see its content in any way. These are entirely my own opinions and views!

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