Ready to see one of the first skirts I ever made?

I was going through some of my closet the other day and found this sad looking skirt I never wore. It's one of the first skirts I ever made. I remember I dyed the fabric because I had leftover dye after doing some shirts (I'm even wearing one in the "after" photos). I also remember my mom helping me on the ruffle and some thread belt loops. I never wore the thing because the waistband just didn't fit right. It was my first time doing a partial elastic waist, and well, it was pretty obvious that I hadn't done this before.

Okay, here is the before, without a petticoat (I should have used one since I knew I would in the "after" photos, sorry).

I had tried to add some waist ties, but they were too long, so I tried to wrap them around the waist like a belt first, but that just looked lumpy, as you can see in the first photo.

I made this skirt right when I started learning about lolita. I think I knew even back then that it didn't fit the style, but was more "inspired by." It was kind of a test run for some fabric I had only a small quantity of, to see if it would be enough for a loli skirt. I believe the answer was "no" since I never made one out of that fabric.

Here's what it looks like now:

It's not that much different since I just re-did the waistband, but what's important is that now the waistband fits! I just did full elastic for simplicity's sake. This skirt isn't nice enough to be worth the effort of half elastic. At least now I might actually wear it, probably when I need to quickly throw something on since it's relatively casual compared to a lot of my other clothes.

I also turned the failed attached waist ties into a separate belt. There's thread loops holding it on. It's short enough to tie gracefully now, which I think makes the whole skirt work.