This skirt started life as a Butterick pattern - one of those multi-purpose ones that has skirts and pants in several lengths, nothing fancy to them. Just skirts. Unless they were pants.

But I had a vision.

It was a vision that had its roots in England, where people used to come up with inventive clothes indeed. Or maybe it was that I spent more time in clubs in England that I have in the US. Anything's possible. But even by those standards, the skirt I saw was something awesome, particularly if you were about five years younger and seriously wrapped up in yourself.

I decided not to let that stop me.

The pattern in question is Butterick 3397, view b. According to the pattern, that's a semi-fitted aline skirt with a mock-fly zipper and stitched hem. But that seemed a little boring.

I started with the front of the skirt. While it was certainly acceptable as it was, there was no reason at all to not to have pockets, and I happened to have some black pleather that would go nicely with the black canvas I was using for the skirt (one of the reasons I really, really dislike black denim is its tendency to fade; while canvas fades, for some reason it isn't as bad). I cut pockets into the front. That meant, of course, that I needed to make pockets. The lining that doesn't show is white cotton that I had hanging about, while the bit that shows behind the cut out of the pocket is the pleather. The pocket is in the shape of a big square, and when I sewed the side seams, I sewed the pocket right in as well. I like large pockets. I even put a watch pocket on the right front with some purple lining material I had.

An excellent start, I thought. I've never had any luck at all with making actual fly zippers (though I am getting better at the task). But I have been able to figure out how to put in a zipper. By machine, even. So I got three twenty-inch zippers and put one in at each side seam, with the opening at the hem. And then I put one in at the back seam. I thought about putting one in at the front, but that seemed a bit much.

Instead, I went to work with the D-rings. I put D-rings into the side seams, just above the tops of the zippers, and in the front at the waistband, positioned so that the center of the tab of pleather was exactly on the line of the pocket - half of the tab overlaps the pleather, half the canvas. Nothing that exciting was happening on the back waist, so I put them on either side of the center back belt loop.

The belt loops are made of grommeted leather sold on a reel like lace. The original pattern didn't have belt loops, but that seemed stupid to me. As I wanted them to function with a belt of normal size, the loops actually are about two inches long, to the waistband's inch width.

That was pretty good, but the skirt seemed to need more pockets. After all, I like pockets. What I don't like is going dancing and needing to either monitor my purse constantly, hold it even while dancing, or putting all the purses in a pile and dancing around the pile. Instead, the good lord made us pockets. So I put a couple of cargo pockets on the sides, over the side seams, just above the D-rings. The pockets are pleated at the side, but because they kept falling open while I was wearing the skirt, I took a few stitches right at the top, which solved the problem. I could put more than a credit card in, and it wouldn't fall out. The flaps are actually separate - the back of the pocket is the skirt itself - and are lined in more of the purple from the watch pocket. I keep saying that I'm going to get a few more D-rings and make straps for the pockets.

The final change I made was to add a butt pocket. But in imitation of a pair of pants I saw in England, I didn't make a typical butt pocket. Instead, it's a large square pocket, much bigger than a normal one, and I topstitched it in blue, by finding the center of the pocket and running a thread just to one side, then just to the other, and the same for the horizontals. In the bottom right quadrant thus created, I put another, smaller pocket of the purple material.

When I wear this out and about for clubbing, I add a couple things. I have two straps of the grommeted pleather, with two pieces of that on each one, that I generally run from the D-rings at the back waist, across the center seam, to the D-ring on the opposite side. I also made a pair of chains (by going to Home Depot and buying ten feet of chain - I have no idea what they thought was happening, given that I bought that and eight snap hooks) from the back waist to the front waist, without crossing the center seam.

If I wore it more often (sadly, I almost never wear it, even though it looks awesome with black and blue striped tights and the zips open) I'd probably get more serious about putting a few loops of PVC in around the zippers to hold the skirt closed when the zippers are open. With the zippers open, the skirt is almost a hobble skirt, since I significantly altered the pattern when I decided to put the zippers on. With the zippers open, there's a lot more room to move, but sometimes the flaps flap. I've been thinking of getting PVC tubing and angled connecters. I'd punch holes on either side of the zipper, the diameter of the tubing, and buttonhold stitch those. Then I'd run the tubing through it and put a connecter on the back side. Because they were angled connecters, I'd then run tubing between the backside connecter and the one above it - the PVC wouldn't form loops, but instead a ladder effect, with the crosspieces visible on the front and the poles visible on the back. But as I say, I don't wear it that often.