Pleated Skirt

When Kimberly issued the skirt challenge, and showed us her beautiful gathered skirt, I was excited to make my own. For some reason, I thought I could do it without a pattern. I mean, skirts are easy, right? I really don't know what I was thinking. Despite a few little nitpicks here and there, I'm quite pleased with my final product.

I went to my fabric stash and pulled out these coordinating fabrics from Riley Blake's collection. I had a purchased four yards of each at the Happy Quilt warehouse but didn't have anything planned for them. I thought the sunburst fabric would make a fun and colorful skirt. I started out by cutting two rectangles (from selvage to selvage) the length that I wanted for my skirt. I sewed the two pieces together and then sewed a hem. (I did it in black thread, but I wish I'd done it in white. I also should have done a blind hem.) At first, I tried to make a gathered skirt but I didn't like the way it looked. Kimberly suggested I try pleats instead. Never having worked with pleats, did a little internet research and played around with pleating on different scraps of fabric until I found the type of pleats I wanted (there are several types of pleats, who knew?). I then spent a bit of time playing around with my skirt, pinning and tucking until I found a pleat width I liked. I initially make my pleats much wider but I decided to space them about 3 inches apart, which I liked better. I ironed all my pleats in and then topstitched down the front of pleat about 8 inches to keep my pleats in place and to create shape to my skirt. I can't find the tutorial I used as my model, but this tutorial shows how I basically created my skirt.

After sewing my pleats in place, I sewed the two sides together and put in the zipper. I attempted to put in a lapped zipper, but when that failed, I went with the old center-seam standby. Not as refined, but it gets the job done. Next up was the waistband. I wanted to do a black piping to set the waistband off from the rest of the skirt. I love the effect it gives but I should have cut the black fabric on the bias so it would have moved and shaped itself better. Ruth also recommended using linen fabric as it was easy to work with and shape. Don't look too closely on my piping (especially around the curves). It's a mess. But from far away, the effect is quite nice.

The other thing I didn't know about wide waistbands is that they should be cut on the curve so that they will be narrower at the top. That way, they conform to the waist better and offer a snugger fit. My skirt and waistband created a bit of a gap, so I sewed in three makeshift darts in my skirt to lessen the problem.

As you can see, there's still a lot of space in my waistband, but it's much better than it was before. I like my skirts to sit on my hip and not fit too tight. It's not quite as snug as I would have liked, but at least I don't think it's going to fall off me. The final touch was sewing buttonholes and buttons on the waistband tab. Again, here I learned that I should have sewed my buttons closer to the end of the tab. Now, there's a bit of waistband that sticks up.

After making my skirt, I had to make something for Zara as well. I used the coordinating fabric to make this quick onesie dress. It seriously only took me twenty minutes and I think it looks great.

I may have to make some more.