How not to make a dirndl

I've been making quite a lot of the same skirt pattern I have noticed (you haven't even seen the denim version yet!).

And while I love the shape of this one, it seems you can have too much of a good thing. I found some fabric while shopping online which I just couldn't let go of, it's got squirrels on it!! And even at a whopping £12 a meter I still had to have some, but I stuck to just ordering a single meter of it. Once it arrived I then started to wonder what to do with it, but really we all know it had to be a skirt. I mean just look at it!

It's a light cotton, navy blue with white and light blue squirrels all over (no pattern matching required you will notice. Some of these little guys even have little acorns!!

I figured a good and frugal use of my meter would be a dirndl skirt, the only measuring needed really was the waistband and the length, providing it was wide enough the waist gathers would surely take care of the rest. I researched how to plough ahead with this and found a great tutorial by Gertie on her 'Blog for better sewing'. Wonderful! Off I went.

Now it's disclosure time. There are no photos of this skirt, and I shall explain why. The tutorial was great, easy to follow and resulted in a very nice dirndl. Then when I tried it on it became apparent that ample hips like mine do not lend themselves to snug waists and gathers around the hips... My word I looked wide! 

These skirts are perfectly beautiful on other people, but on me... Nope

However I refused to let the squirrels down, this skirt can be saved!! So one afternoon (while also tending to a poorly bunny) I unpicked the whole thing! Well it was just the waist but it felt like the whole thing. This left me with a correctly measured waistband, and a tube of fabric hemmed at one end and with a zip at the other. You know what this calls for (I explained to the poorly bunny who glared at me from his cone of shame)... Box pleats!!

Ta da!

A smoother line over the hips and all the fullness of the dirndl... Boy do I feel smug! I confess that I managed this largely by fluke, I just guessed the size of one pleat, repeated it so they all matched, and asides from a smaller pleat over the hip opposite the zip, perfect fit!!

And a close up of the pleats. This went from a huge failure to a huge success thanks to box pleats. It's such a fun skirt, and I can't believe I've never made anything from a novelty print before... Madness!!

One more shot from the back... I really love this skirt

Oh and the bunny is fine now :)