Maternity Project for Hannah

This Summer a friend of mine had given me a skirt to turn into maternity for her.. I took it a bit further than she asked. Noticing that the hem of this denim skirt was rather ragged I suggested cutting off the hem and putting a ruffle of a different kind of fabric on the bottom. And then I went even further (that's me, not knowing when to stop..) and decided it would be fun to make her a maternity top to match. All was well intended and it looked pretty good together but in the end I found that I liked the skirt just with a t-shirt and the top that I'd made looked better with a pair of jeans. 
 I also wanted to attempt a tutorial with this project so I took pictures that I'll post and I'll try to describe how I made this outfit. Enjoy!!! 

Here is the pattern I used. Since it was an empire waist it made it easy to convert to maternity. I used option A...the pink dress.

  First i copied the pattern, brought up the front neckline and cut out the lining. After the lining I cut the bodice front out differently. See here ^ I made the front bodice have a 2-3" extension. I simply placed it away from the fold and tapered into the neckline gradually. This was because I wanted to gather the front to the lining to make a pretty gathered look across the bust. The lining did have darts in it but the bodice itself didn't, the gathers took care of the extra fabric. * I also cut the arm hole higher *

 Another shot of the top, bodice and bodice lining.

This was the 'skirt' that went on the top, aka..the bottom of the top. I made the front droop down for the baby belly.

Front and Back.

Colorful band on the bottom of the top.

Hannah wearing the maternity top.

We'll take a break here and look at how I modified her skirt...

 The first thing I did in modifying this skirt was to cut out the zipper and cut off the waist band.

 Second, I shortened it and cut a ruffle out of orange fabric that coordinated with the top.

I took Nylon Lycra Stretch fabric found at Hancocks and made my waist band. In my experience folding the fabric over and cutting it at 13-14" makes for a perfect belly band size.

I added the belly band and the ruffle. It turned out so cute. I put it on and thought, man this is a really hot look! :-) I'll have to do this for me next time around. 

Like I said...I did come to the conclusion that the skirt looked better with a more ordinary shirt than the blouse I made. And the Blouse looked great with a pair of jeans... I didn't get pictures of that but I'll post the rest of this outfit below...V 

 Here it is... Its cute together but I did liked it best when the top was put with jeans and the skirt with a t-shirt.

 Back

 Here you can see the zipper at the center back.

 Skirt, showing belly band. 

Well there it is folks...my first tutorial thing. I did have more pictures of construction but sadly they were lost :-( It would have been better if I'd not lost those... But go ahead and tell me what you thought!!