Monday, September 12, 2016

Maxi Skirt

I do love a good maxi skirt!

I have conquered my fear of threading my serger. Thanks to a great video from Sew Sew Easy, which I have bookmarked for future use, I am now able to thread my serger! The user manual was a little confusing (overwhelming) and seeing a video make it so much easier. Of course Deby at Sew Sew Easy is from across the pond and I'll admit it, I'm a sucker for a British accent.

I had picked up a remnant and tried to make a skirt on Saturday, and learned the hard way that it's mandatory to actually take body measurements when making clothing. Lesson learned. It was a remnant, so whatever.

After actually taking measurements and reading up on how to make a maxi skirt, I drew it out and got started. This was really easy!

What I wanted was a maxi skirt with an elastic waistband. I'm not fooling with zippers on clothing just yet.

I used parts of two different tutorials. To better understand how to measure for a skirt, I used Sew Sew Easy's tutorial on the Perfect Maxi Skirt, which has some good diagrams on how to measure a skirt. Because I wanted an elastic waistband, I followed parts of this one over at Me Sew Crazy. I used 1.5" elastic for my waistband so I had to make some adjustments to the waistband piece measurements.

I used 2 yards of black and white stripe jersey knit fabric. Because I only had 2 yards, you'll note that the waistband pattern is directionally different than the main skirt, and that is because 2 yards was just enough to get the right length, so I had to cut my pieces for the elastic waistband from my scraps. Another lesson learned.

For this project, I used my serger (and I even changed out the needles for ball point because this is knit fabric) for the side seams and finishing. I used my regular sewing machine for the waistband and hem.

I tried a rolled hem on the serger using some scraps but I didn't like how they looked, so I finished the hem using my regular sewing machine, using the lightning bolt stitch for knits.

Kinda feeling like I nailed it.