So let’s jump straight into finishing the skirt shall we?!
You can see part one here, the absolute finished product will be shot and up tomorrow.
1. Stiffening the waistband.
I’m using Petersham ribbon as the stiffening for my waist band, but it is entirely up to you what you use, and how precisely you make it. There are many ways that this could be done, this is how I’ve made the skirt.
The width of your waist band is also an individual choice. I’ve decided to make mine the width of the Petersham ribbon, but you can make it as wide or narrow as you like.
Stiffening length is your waist measurement plus an inch for seam allowance.
Measure double the width of your stiffening plus maybe 1cm for seam allowance, and add 1cm onto each end. Cut.
2. Folding and Ironing
Fold the ends in as seen in picture part 1, and then over the stiffening as seen in part 2. Iron.
3. Pin
Pin to keep in place and set aside.
4. Insert the zip
Iron down a crease/seam on the wrong side(or inside) of your two side seams of the skirt, about 1cm wide as seen in picture.
5. Pin zip
Turn the garment right side out and pin the zip in place, making sure to be as exact as possible. Just under the zipper, mark with a pin where you want the seam to begin/end as seen in the photo marked with an X.
6. Sew Side Seam
Turn the garment inside out and pin the seams together. Take your marker that you placed on the right side out and re-pin to this side so you can see where to stop sewing.
I’ve marked it in an X in the photo. Sew.
Now turn the garment right side out. This is what it should look like:
7. Sew zip in place
8. Attach waist band
Now that your zip is in place, pin your waist band to the waist of the skirt, right sides together as shown in the picture. If you have miscalculated, now is the time to adjust the waist band if you need to make it shorter. Trust me it’s much harder once you’ve sewn it on!
Sew as I have marked with dots in the picture above.
Now is when I would over-lock all of the raw seams inside the garment, and cut off any loose threads. It’s like the clean up part of the job.
If you don’t have an over lock stitch you can use the zig-zag stitch, or you can slip-stitch it by hand.
Iron the garment and now all you have to do is the hem.
Circle skirts aren’t easy to hem because of the angle they are cut on. I would take a short-cut here and over lock the hem, but if you don’t have that luxury then you can use bias binding to help with the hem.
On this skirt I have used the over lock stitch on the raw hem, and then narrowly turned it up and straight stitched.
These two websites have great advice on how to sew bias cut hems.
Sewing.org
Ehow.com
Tomorrow is the finished product in photos!
Again, happy sewing!
LM
x