Second garment: Skirt pattern and pattern comparisons

Now I've finished my first, fairly easy garment.  What next?

My experience using the See and Sew pattern was so positive that I went back to that rack at JoAnn Fabrics and found a New Look skirt pattern for my daughter who is leaving on a church mission in two weeks.  Not quite as simple because it has a separate waistband and zipper.  Having sewn a number of zipper projects in the past year, I shrugged off the challenge with a fairly laissez faire attitude.

Oops.

Umm, zippers.  And sizes.  And directions.

The zipper directions.  Not clear and the pictures didn't help.  That on top of me misunderstanding the directions for facing the waistband cost me HOURS!  Since it has been a few years since I last added a waistband, I muffed it. (A different picture accompanying the directions for the waistband and zipper would have greatly helped my understanding too.) I finally unpicked the whole thing from the skirt and will cut out another waistband and start over.  Now I see why it said to study the directions before beginning.  If unclear, read it again.  Work with scrap fabric, but definitely don't use $17 a yard fabric (thankfully I got it on 50% discount.)  At least I had extra since I laid out the pattern as economically as I could while keeping it on straight of grain.

As for the zippers, I finally went to YouTube.  The first video confused me but the second one was excellently done by Craftsy.  I've put the link on my sidebar under Sewing Tutorials and here.  I will be playing it as I complete each step.  In fairness, this is a difficult process to describe using just words without a video so I'll cut the writers slack. 

Size measurements.  I used a bigger size than expected because of the listed waist size.  It almost fell off my daughter when I tried it on her.  I might make a sewing moulage of her so I can sew her clothing while she is serving her mission.  So I knocked it down about 4 sizes, smaller than I had initially expected to cut.  I should note that the See and Sew sizing wasn't terrific either.  I guessed at the size a little but it was a logical guess since I don't totally match their sizes.

I just looked up the makers of each of the patterns I have used this year.  Simplicity makes New Look, and Butterick makes New Look and McCall's owns both as well as all the others as of November 2017.  My mother used to say that Vogue and Butterick made the best patterns and directions, and she basically threw away the Simplicity directions and muddled through on her own knowledge of sewing to make those designs.  Likewise, I've always struggled more with Simplicity patterns.  I wonder what will happen now that all the pattern companies are under one head.

Hopefully I'll be able to make a new waistband and add a zipper more successfully now.