Summer Skirt

Spending all summer teaching kids different crafts had made me kinda miss the whole thing myself, so when a lady from my church had asked me to teach her daughter how to sew it gave me an urge to make a couple of things for myself. I'd had this chevron cotton fabric for a while and so I decided to take a stab at making myself a skirt.

One thing I will say is that sewing is not like riding a bike. You don't just remember everything you've been taught as soon as you jump back in-- or at least I don't. This skirt probably took me three weeks to complete! Partially because with working as a nanny there are a lot of weekends, afternoons and evenings spent not at home. Not that I mind it, but it does mean you have to stick to more portable hobbies and leave the sewing machine at home. So whenever I got the chance, I'd spend an hour or so relearning how to put in a gathering stitch, or sew a buttonhole, and ask myself why I don't do this more often so that I have better practice. But I will say that despite the small frustrations it was really fun and made me want to make a few more, so that might be my hobby of choice for the autumn. And I taught myself (semi-successfully) how to put in a zipper, and hem my own skirt, two things I'd never done before.

I started off my measuring a skirt I'd made a few years ago, and patterning the new one off of that. I knew I wanted it a bit longer, which I later found out meant I wouldn't be able to add the big in-seam pockets the last skirt had, since I bout the same amount of fabric I had bought for the first skirt, but I think it turned out pretty well none the less. And I'm hoping to run to the craft store in the next few weeks and see if I can pick up a bit more and add some top pockets instead of inseam ones.

I measured out the length I wanted the skirt, plus some seam allowance, and cut out a front and back panel. I then cut out a waistband, which is when I realized I wouldn't have extra fabric for the pockets, as I had to cut two strips for the waist band that I attached to make the full circumference of my waist. This is where I screwed up a bit.

I had remembered to add a seam allowance to the length of the skirt, but not to the waistband. My original plan was to have a two inch waist band which meant that I would need five inches so that I could fold it over, two inches in front, two inches in back, and have a half an inch on both sides for seam allowance. Unfortunately I only cut two inches, which meant that it ended up a little less than an inch in height once it was attached to the skirt. I hadn't done sewing math in a long time, and completely forgot to ass for seam allowance!

 Still I pressed on. The first thing I stitched was the two panels for the skirt. I sewed them together leaving about five or six inches at the top on one side to add a zipper and then started my gathering stitch at the waist, making a line along the edge of the fabric and then pulling the thread to gather the fabric.

 This was when I realized I didn't make my waistband wide enough and in order for me to add it o I was going to have to add extra fabric, or cut a new waistband from the skirt's length. It was also lie two in the morning when I got to this point and so I went to bed and left it to be planned out another day.

And then I got busy, and the skirt sat for a few days until I figured out something to do. It wasn't my first choice but I decided to go ahead and sew two strips of fabric together as a way of making the waistband taller. Then two more in the same way, and attaching all four together to make the waistband wider. It all seemed like so many extra steps, but gave me a much clearer way to fix the mess I had made and a couple Do's and Don't's for the next time! Because it had been so long since I had done this, and I was doing all of it from memory instead of from a pattern or tutorial, I made a ton of mistakes, but I think this was ultimately a lesson on persistence. I've worn this skirt so much since I finished it, and it bothers me that it practically took me a month to finish, when it was really quite simple, and I was just adding extra steps for myself that I didn't need to do! Don't you just hate it when you're basically standing in your own way to accomplish something?



 With a fresh perspective on the situation I forged ahead. I attached the waistband to the skirt, and was happily surprised that when I tried on the skirt it wasn't too big, or too small but actually fit my waist pretty well.

 I then had a big challenge to face which was to add a zipper. I questioned why I chose this moment to learn to put a zipper in, as the day I was working on it happened to be my sister's birthday and I had hoped to wear the skirt to her party that evening. I watched about 15 tutorials, and then kind of winged it when it came to the zipper. And of course took no photo evidence of the process, but I have a few of the finished product. Basically what I did was attach the zipper using pins, and then instead of using the zipper foot on my machine, I used the regular foot, and sewed up, over, and then up again in a "U" shape around the teeth, and then sewed it into the waistband.

It was then that I realized I had only two steps left! Angels sang as I attached my button-hole foot... and my machine stopped working. I could not figure out why it was only stitching one side of the button hole and not the other three needed. A few days of reading the manual and changing the settings, and I realized that for this sized waistband I was using too big of a button, and switching to a smaller one worked. I felt ridiculous that it was that simple.

The next day I measured from my waist to where I wanted the skirt to end, adding seam allowance (because I learned my lesson from the waistband), and then I decided to do something I actually really liked. When putting in the hem I stitched around at the base of the fold all the way around to secure the fabric, and then stitched all the way around at the edge of the fabric creating a one inch gap between the two seams. I think it actually created a cool effect on the end and made the hem look really polished. I think I'm going to do this with all of my hems from now on. It just looks so good!

 Lastly I learned to machine stitch a button on and I will never hand sew one again (I hate hand sewing buttons)! And I hand stitched a hook and eye into the waistband to secure it more easily. I am always having trouble keeping my zippers up in some of my skirts that I do this to all of them now. It really keeps it intact.

All in all I think it came out really well. There were a lot of mistakes along the way, but I really love this skirt and I know I'll get a lot of use out of it!

~Delaney