I had so much fun with my Ogden Pattern Hack Series (see previous posts here, here, here and here if you missed it!) that I wanted to do another for the fall! I polled y’all on Instagram and there was such a wide variety of answers…and don’t worry I saved all the ideas for the future! I settled on a mini skirt series because of a few factors: Texas is so hot still that I don’t need pants or cardigans yet, I have a ton of hack ideas already pinned on my Pinterest board and my husband may have causally mentioned he likes when I wear them…so mini skirts it is!

Last fall I used the Cher Skirt pattern by Made for Mermaids as a part of my Fall Capsule Wardrobe. The pattern was super basic, super fast, took little fabric and would be a great jumping off point for all the great RTW inspiration I had saved while planning for fall. Since I started pinning ideas for this series, I keep spotting more and more but I’m going to cap myself at four hacks just like last time! You can browse my Pinboard and see where I’m going and guess which ones I’m going to select!

Asymmetrical hems are super on trend this fall so I just had to play around with the detail! Without further ado, here’s how I hacked the Cher skirt to have an asymmetrical button placket!

How to Sew an Asymmetrical Button Placket

This tutorial can apply to other patterns that you may already have in your collection, whether or not they have a center front button placket already or not! If it doesn’t have a placket, just follow along and add your own placket just as I did with the Cher pattern.

If your skirt front is a pattern piece cut on the fold, print out a second skirt front piece. Place them side by side, aligning the front center folds and tape together. The Cher Skirt has a built in placket, so I folded that back and trimmed it away (to save for later!) before joining my two skirt front pieces. This will give you a full skirt front to work with!

Next, place your ruler or straight edge as you want your asymmetrical placket to be…this is totally person preference but I’ll explain how I measured mine! I wanted to leave a little room at the top corner for the placket to be before the side seam so the button wouldn’t be right on the side of my waist. I wanted the bottom corner to be just past the center front (inspiration came from this Forever 21 skirt). Once I was happy with how my placket would look, I drew a line down the straight edge.

I cut the skirt front along the diagonal line to create a right and a left skirt front. This is when I felt super clever to reattach the placket pieces I had cut off previously (genius, right??) with a little extension from scrap paper as needed. The placket was originally 2″ wide, resulting in a 1″ button placket, but you can make it wider or less wide per your preference if your skirt pattern didn’t have a built in placket.

I used my left and right skirt front pattern pieces (along with the remaining pattern pieces from the Cher pattern) to cut out the fabric. I was using “directional” denim print so I had to be sure everything would line up nicely once sewn. Helpful Tip: mark the front of the pattern piece on the mirrored piece so you don’t accidentally cut it on the wrong side of your fabric!

I followed the rest of the Cher tutorial to complete the skirt with a few minor changes. Since I had an asymmetrical placket, I wasn’t able to hem the skirt completely before turning the placket in. I finessed it as much as I could, and then straightened out the hem once the placket was turned back and topstitched.

Last change: I sewed my buttonholes horizontally rather than vertically since the skirt will pull sideways across the placket while sitting, moving around etc.

The Finished Look

Here is my Asymmetrical Denim Skirt!! I love how unique, trendy and fun this skirt is!!! I used Art Gallery Fabric denim that is nice and rigid which gave the bell shape of the skirt a really defined look. I hope you enjoyed this hack and especially hope you come back for the next three!