A skirt has no crotch curve, no fly and no inseam, which makes it the simplest garment on this site to draft and the easiest to make unwearable. One decision does it: a skirt that narrows towards the hem and has no opening will not let you take a normal stride, and you discover that standing up from a chair rather than at the mirror.
The generator already knows this. Pick a silhouette and it sets both an opening type and a length to match. Only the length and the hem allowance travel to the vent generator, though — the type does not, and that gap is covered below. This page is about that decision and the four that follow it.
For wedding and ceremony projects
These drafting steps can support many kinds of garment. If this one is for a wedding or ceremony, rings may be another decision for the couple — separate from the fit and construction work here. Capucinne offers engagement rings and wedding bands made to order.
Browse custom rings for a wedding or ceremonyAffiliate link: Nastix may earn a commission if you buy through this link, at no extra cost to you.
Two values pass on their own. The strongest one is carried in the link itself rather than read from your session, so it survives whatever else you save in between — which is not true of every handoff on this site.
| From | Value | Into | Field | How |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Skirt | Back opening length and hem allowance | Vent | Opening length, hem allowance | Automatic — carried in the link |
| Skirt | Opening type (vent or slit) | Vent | Vent style | Does not travel — choose it yourself |
| Waistband | Finished width | Belt loops | Length | Automatic, once the waistband is saved |
| Skirt | Waist you drafted to | Waistband | Waist | By hand — see below |
| Skirt | Side seam at hip level | In-seam pocket | Opening length | By hand |
| Your own choice | Seam allowance | All five | Seam allowance | By hand — use one value everywhere |
The skirt comes first because it decides whether the second piece is needed at all. Belt loops come straight after the waistband, because that handoff reads your session and the session holds one source at a time.
Choose the silhouette before anything else: it sets the hem shaping, and with it whether this skirt needs an opening. The supplied presets give straight, A-line and flared no opening at all; pencil gets a 22 cm vent and tapered an 18 cm slit. The two that narrow towards the hem are the two that cannot be walked in otherwise — and if you narrow one of the others by hand, the same applies to it.
Open the generatorOnly if your silhouette called for one. Open it from the skirt's preview or download page and the opening length and hem allowance arrive already filled in, taken from the skirt you just drafted rather than from a default. The style does not come with them: the generator opens on its centre-back vent preset whatever the skirt decided, so if your skirt called for a slit you have to switch to it. And the slit preset is not the same piece moved sideways: the vent carries an underlap, which is where its vent width goes, while the slit is a folded edge with none, and the two are even cut differently. There is no centre-back slit on this site, so either stay with the centre-back vent or adapt the piece and its placement yourself. Skip this piece entirely if your skirt has no opening.
Open the generatorHidden in the side seam, so it adds nothing to the outside of the skirt and everything to its usefulness. Its opening length, bag width and depth are its own inputs — measure the side seam on your printed skirt and place the opening below the hip curve, where the bag has room to hang without pushing the seam out. Settle the closure first: a side zip claims one of these seams, and a pocket cannot share it.
Open the generatorFirst decide whether you need this piece at all. The skirt already draws its own waistband: a 4 cm band with a 3 cm closure extension, cut on the fold. Use the separate generator when you want a different width, a contoured band, an elastic one, or belt loops — and then ignore the band on the skirt sheet so you do not cut two. Enter the waist the skirt was drafted to, plus the overlap.
Open the generatorDraft these immediately after the waistband, before anything else is saved. The loop length arrives calculated from the finished waistband width. Skip them if the skirt has no belt — a waistband with loops and nothing to thread through them reads as unfinished.
Open the generatorThe vent join is handled for you. These are the rest.
The decision the whole project turns on. A pencil skirt narrows the hem by 3 cm and a tapered one by 2, which is enough to shorten your step noticeably. The vent or slit gives that movement back. If you widen the hem shaping yourself without re-checking the opening, or narrow it without adding one, nothing warns you — the pattern will draft perfectly either way.
A vent is an overlapped opening that stays closed when you stand still; a slit is open to the edge. The generator defaults to a vent for pencil and a slit for tapered, and that is a style decision you can override — but an overlapped vent needs more hem allowance than a slit, so change the type and check the allowance follows.
An in-seam pocket placed too high sits on the widest part of the hip, where the bag has nowhere to go and pushes the side seam outward. Place the opening below the hip line on the printed piece, and check the bag depth does not reach the hem.
They do not shrink your waist measurement. The block starts from the hip width and uses the darts to bring it down to the waist you entered, so the finished waist is that figure — the waistband matches the number you typed, plus whatever ease and overlap you want. Measuring the printed waist seam with the darts closed is still worth doing, but as a check that the print scale is right, not as a correction to the measurement.
Five generators, five independent allowance settings. The vent inherits the skirt's hem allowance automatically, which is exactly the kind of thing that makes a mismatch elsewhere easy to miss.
Five generators draw a skirt you cannot put on. A vent is not a closure — it stays shut at rest and opens for your stride, which is the opposite job. Nothing on this site drafts a zip, a button or a hook, so this part is yours to decide and it has to be decided before you cut, because two of the three change the pattern.
The usual answer for a fitted skirt. It needs a seam to live in and seam allowance wide enough to take it — 1.5 cm is comfortable, 1 cm is tight. A centre-back zip and the vent have to be planned together, because the zip ends where the vent begins. Mark that point on your own printed pattern rather than reaching for a rule of thumb: on the default 60 cm skirt with a 22 cm vent it falls 38 cm below the waist, which is nowhere near the hip line at 20 cm. Decide the zip length before drafting so the seam allowance is right.
The 3 cm extension on the waistband exists for exactly this. It carries a hook-and-bar or a button and buttonhole, and it fastens the band — which is not the same as getting you into the skirt. On a fitted skirt it works alongside a zip, not instead of one. A skirt loose enough to pull on over the hips does not need the zip, but then it is the ease doing that work, not the hook. This is the one closure that needs no change to the skirt pieces.
A different garment, really: it needs enough hip ease to pull the skirt over the hips, no zip, and usually no darts, because the gathering does the shaping instead. The waistband generator has an elastic style for this. Draft the skirt with more waist ease than you would otherwise — but do not drop the vent on principle. Pulling on over the hips says nothing about walking in it: check the hem width against your stride the same way you would for any other skirt, and a long narrow one will still need an opening.
They cannot share one. Decide which seam the zip takes before you place the pockets: a centre-back zip leaves both side seams free for pockets, and a side zip leaves one — put the single pocket in the opposite seam, or drop the pockets. Nothing in the drafting catches this, because the two generators never meet.
Adding a zip after the side seams are sewn means unpicking one of them, and adding it to a seam drafted with 1 cm allowance means it will sit proud. This is the decision that is cheapest at the paper stage and most expensive at the machine.
These are working figures for an adult skirt on 150 cm goods. Lay your own printed pieces out before buying, because hem shaping moves the total more than size does — a flared skirt takes considerably more cloth than a pencil at the same length.
Roughly 0.8–1.2 m for a knee-length skirt, plus about 0.15 m for the waistband and loops. A strongly flared hem takes noticeably more, because the hem is a much wider arc than the waist.
Mid-weight woven with a little structure: gabardine, twill, denim, wool suiting, heavier linen. Drapey cloth softens the silhouette you drafted — an A-line in soft viscose reads less as an A-line and falls closer to the body.
Lighter pocketing cotton rather than the shell fabric. An in-seam pocket in heavy cloth shows as a ridge through the side seam, which defeats the point of hiding it there.
The waistband, and the vent extension if you drafted one. An unsupported vent folds over and twists after a few wearings.
The vent comes late and the hem comes last, and both of those are the opposite of what feels natural.
Fuse the waistband and vent interfacing while the pieces are flat.
Sew the darts first — they shape the waist every other measurement depends on.
Put the pockets into the side seams before closing them, while both edges are still flat and accessible — two pockets if the zip is going into the centre back, one in the opposite seam if it is going into a side.
Close the side seams, catching the pocket bags in them. The seam carrying a side zip has no pocket and stays open for now.
Build the vent or slit at the centre back, then the back seam above it, then set the zip into the seam you left open.
Attach the waistband, then the belt loops over the finished band.
Hang the skirt for a day before hemming if it is A-line, flared or cut on the bias. The hem drops as the bias relaxes, and a hem levelled on day one will not be level on day two.
Hem last, after the hanging and after a fitting.
Specific to assembling these five pieces, rather than skirt-making in general.
The failure this project exists for. The generator pairs an opening with the silhouettes that need one, but it cannot know you then reduced the hem by hand. Changing the hem shaping means re-checking whether you still have room to walk.
On anything flared or bias-cut the hem keeps dropping for hours. There is no way to correct this afterwards except to cut it again, shorter.
The drafted waist and the measurement you entered are the same number on this block, so there is nothing to subtract and no second figure to hunt for. The waistband is that number plus the ease you want and the overlap for the closure. The mistake is reaching for the waistband generator's own default instead, which has no idea what skirt it is going onto.
Possible, unpleasant, and the usual reason an in-seam pocket ends up visibly puckered.