My 1 hour skirt

If you remember a couple weeks ago I picked up some amazing vintage fabric over at Wholly Craft. I finally had the time to turn it into a skirt. Super easy and took only one hour. (please excuse the mess, my guest room has also turned into my sewing room and craft, and well general junk magazine stash room)

The fabric had a high stretch content on the weft and it was a polyester 120" wide (60" when folded).  I measured out my length for the skirt and then cut it across.

After unfolding it this was the width and my waistband. Luckily with the stretch on this fabric and thickness I was able to use the waistband without elastic.  I just needed to account for the stretch so I made it 2" smaller then my waist measurement. It was perfect.

To bring the fabric into a more manageable length I used my ruffler foot to assist me in the gathering.

I had it set to ruffle every 6 stitches.

After everything was ruffles it was about half the width but still not enough to comfortably set it into the waistband. At this point the seams were also sewn up so that they could be included into the ruffled gathers without it looking awkward.

With a contrasting thread I put in a basting stitch and then pulled the last of the gathering to make it fit into the waistband.

With everything pinned into place it was time to sew the skirt and waistband to each other.

With this type of polyester fabric there were no problems with everything unraveling so I didn't feel the need to serge the fabric and the waistband I had picked was a simple fold over straight style in two pieces. I didn't need side seams but I wanted them to be in there for extra support against the fabric stretching too much.

Carefully sewing the skirt and waistband together I find it easier if the flat waistband is on the bottom and the gathered skirt is on top so you can watch that nothing gets twisted or overly gathered in places.

Sewing with a stretch style waistband you also have to remember to use a stretch stitch and not a straight stitch or else the stitches will break when you stretch it to put it on.

You must be very careful to not sew over pins or sew them in and forget to take them out. It is an easy mistake to make when dealing with so much fabric.

The finished skirt before the hem. I decided to do an easy 1/2" top stitch hem and not worry about the stretch since there was so much fabric for the skirt I had no worries about torn stitches in the hem.

 

Ta Da! All done and ready to wear out.  

What have you been sewing lately? Is there a super fast and easy project that you are proud of?  Just because it's fast doesn't mean it isn't good or well crafted as long as you get the results that you wanted.

Cheers!