Transcripts
1. Intro: Hi, I'm Victoria. Welcome to creating a fabulous
1950s swing skirt pattern. Now the 1950s was my
favorite era for fashion. I loved the voluminous skirts, the excess of fabric in these dresses and skirts
was mind-blowing. I think people had, had enough of the severity
of the war years, and fashion designers,
were happy to oblige. So if ever you get a chance to go to an exhibition and see original 1950s dresses and
skirts from people like Dior, it is absolutely mind-blowing. Now, in this class, I'm going to show
you how to make a fully flared swing skirt pattern, and a gathered one as well. But I'll show you, instead
of coming from the waist, which has a lot of
50s skirts do, they're easy patterns to make, but I'm going to be showing
you from a hip yoke. So you'll have a hip seam here, you'll have a measurement of
where you would like your, the depth of your yoke to be. And then from there you will
make your skirt swing out. Now if you wanted it to
come from your waist, it's easy to adapt, that's not a problem. but I'll be showing you
how to make a flared one and then from the
flared pattern we will make a gathered pattern as well. Now a word of warning, these skirts take a massive
amount of fabric, I'm talking metres here, okay? When you use a really
expensive fabric, they become very
expensive garments. But oh, so beautiful. Oh so beautiful. I will show you how
to make the pattern, cut it out in calico or
a fabric that's going to be similar to what you will like your
final skirt to be in. So if it's going to
be a drapey skirt, then you'll have to use
a drapey fabric. Using your master skip block pattern
or A-line skirt pattern, or if you have a commercial
straight skirt pattern, I'll show you how to
pivot out the darts, create your yoke,
create the flare or gathers from that. And then I'll show you
how you can drop the back hem to create a
really lovely line. But you can also lengthen
this completely down for a wedding skirt to go with a beautiful bustier or
something like that. I mean, it is a really,
really beautiful skirt. It is, it is super expensive if you use
really expensive fabric, but hey, once that's
on your body, you will not worry
about the expense. Expense at all. I really look forward to
seeing you in class. In the next lesson we'll
discuss your project, okay.
2. Your Project: Before I discuss
about the project, I just want to explain
that you will need a basic skirt block or an A-line skirt to
start this pattern. If you have a commercial
pattern, that's perfectly okay. But have a look at my
previous two classes if you don't, because
they will give you the basic block or the basic A-line skirt pattern to start, be a perfect place for
this particular class. Also, under the Resources
tab there's going to be a list of international equipment
suppliers and also a patterncutting
equipment list as well. I'll actually extend the calico because you'll need a bit
more calico for this class. But also there's two, there's a video showing you the actual equipment
that you need and that's in the
previous two classes. I won't be re-doing it
again for this class, have a look at
those two classes, it's worth your while. Your project for this
class is to create a flared or a gathered
swing skirt, make it up in calico, or a fabric that's similar
to your final fabric, or even better, make it
up in your final fabric. Then post it into the gallery so that we
can all have a look, and I mean, it's so
lovely to go and see what other people are doing and read their comments and everybody learns by everybody
else's comments as well. Then also I'd really
love it if you posted a Review because this helps me as a teacher to
know if I need to change things and also
helps Skillshare as well, so, I can't wait to
see all your skirts. So exciting. I love the 50s.
3. The Hip Yoke~Pt 1: So here you can see that
I'm drawing my hipseam onto my calico skirt block. If you don't have one of these, just check out my first Skillshare class where
I teach you how to make a basic skirt
block to fit you perfectly and then
make up a calico. It is such a savior
when you want to do your design lines
and you can see, you can visually see
what's going to look like and the balance compared
to the rest of the skirt. I mean, you can still just apply those lines straight
onto your pattern, but this is a lot easier
to put it on yourself, draw the lines, put it
onto the mannequin, or just hold it up in the
mirror against the wall, and in this instance, I've actually added
an extra piece of calico onto the
finished length, because my skirt block
only comes to my knees, just to get
an idea of balance. And then once I've finished
drawing my lines here, then I'll just apply
this measurement onto the skirt as I'm
going to show you shortly. Even though this is just
a straight piece and my skirt is going to be
a fully flared circle, it still gives me an idea
and I have a better, it just saves a bit of time. All I need to do is just
half and I do half the back, that's all I need. Okay. Okay. So I'm just
going to trace off my master skirt block onto
another piece of paper, then use that to make
the new swing skirt. But I just wanted to show
you that you can use an A-line skirt pattern if
that's what you have. Whether it's the one
that you made from my previous class or you
have your own pattern. And then, you know what
I'm just going to show you is, I just moved that there. You can see as
long as you've got that nice clean hip area here with no fullness
at the side. This pattern will be fine to use. So I'm just going to trace
off my skirt block. Oh, actually I'm going to mark that's the bottom of my dart. And I'm going to be extending my skirt block to
85 centimetres, which has nearly 34 inches. So I'll just continue that line down, because that's going to be the finish
length of my skirt. My papers a bit curly here because I'm getting
to the end of the roll, so I'm just reversing the curl, that's better. So I'm just applying my hip seam line. I know it's 14 centimetres
below my waist, and there I've got a seam
of about 6-7 millimetres. I'm just drawing it
lightly at the moment, and I'm going to mark
my seam allowance, which is one centimetre or
three-eighths of an inch. Square it out from
the centre front, and I'll do the
same on the back. Quite often the back
has to be lower, and that's because if you've got a more pronounced behind, then you would have to take
this line a little bit lower, but you won't know until
you make your toile up. Again, I square out
from the centre back, that's to make sure
that it doesn't dip, my line doesn't
dip to a point. And I'll do the same
on the back side seam. You can actually use
your French curve as well to mark these lines, I tend to use my grading
rule for everything. Okay. We fold our pattern pieces over and just line up the sideseams to make sure that
those lines match. My sideseam notch there,
yes my sideseam notch. So I just put a tracing through, a tracing wheel through
at this point here. So just make sure that it's
in the right position. Okay, now so we're
going to line up our sideseams so that we can draw our hip seam line and make sure it flows all
the way through smoothly. You may have a more
curved hip line than what I do, I'm quite straight between my hip and my waist. Therefore, you can see that
there's not much curve here, but if you've got a
more curved line, a definite waist suppression,
you'll be lining it up. It might look more like this. So you'll have to
smooth it out there, whereas I'm quite straight. So what you do is just line
up exactly seam on seam, and at that point, that junction where you
marked, just like that. I'll put a bit of tape there. And then all
I'm going to do, is just draw lightly at first. So you can see I actually, I'm coming up because
I'm quite, the way that the sideseam is sitting here, I'm dipping up a
little bit here, so I'll have to
smooth it out a bit and bring it down a fraction. Don't worry how messy it gets, so just feel your way. Okay. Just trace through that new, so we'll cut this. Actually, before you cut it, makes sure that you do some
matching notches here. So you'll have one,
you'll have one at centre front and have one
maybe somewhere here. Don't make them too even,
because it does make it difficult in the sewing
process that you think, oh which side have I got so make, so make them a little bit different in measurement and distance. At the back always
do double notches, so maybe do a couple
of notches here. You'll appreciate these
notches when you come to sew your bottom, of your skirt
onto your hip. Sort of see, it's
actually dipping up a little bit too much, but it might change once
we re-shape the darts. So now we're going
to re-shape the darts, but first, just notch up to the bottom of
the dart like this. Now again, your darts might be lower or they might
be shorter and you might have wider darts
or narrower darts. So this all affects the
curve as you shape it out. I'll move this onto
another piece of paper so that we can draw it out clearly for you.
4. The Hip Yoke~Pt 2: So now we're going to fold out our darts to create our hip yoke. This is the front. So just line it up
exactly here, like this. And then mark around
to the first part of the dart, draw in the hip line here and
make a mark where you've made that cut line,
then usual pencil or you can use your awl. Pivot it around to close
out the dart like this, and then draw in the
rest of the yoke. Actually find it
difficult on paper, I'm usually working in board. Mark in your sideseam, mark in your notch
and then mark in the rest of the, where the slit
is, just mark in that there. Now the reason I'm talking about this here, I'm
trying to explain this, that this is the excess that's leftover after you've pivoted out the dart. So if you have a bigger dart, this might be a lot bigger, this gap might be a lot bigger. In which case, you either
probably might like to shorten the distance of your yoke
so you don't have any of this or otherwise, what you could do is pivot from a point
a little bit lower, not all the way
down to the bottom, because if you pivot
out like this, this is not the problem here. This is the problem in
this particular area here, which is coming over
to your tummy area, so it might get a
little bit tight. So just choose a position a little bit lower
than your dart. It really depends on how
wide your hip yoke is, I mean, you might have
a hip yoke that's only about this distance here, which fine, you have
no problem at all. But if you bring your hip
yoke down even lower, then what you would have to do is
actually create a seam instead. So if you can imagine
this is actually the point I pivoted from, imagine that, that is my line. when I close that line, you would have to then start
and make this this area a seam and
then do another panel on the side and make
that a seam as well. Which is actually very nice. I mean, it's lovely. You can
make it grow-on waist band, and you can bring that
seam all the way up, and it's a really gorgeous line. But in this instance it's
just a plain yoke. So I'm going to leave that alone because I think
that'll be fine. I don't mind that little
bit of excess on me there. This is my centre front fold, and the grain line will
be marked like this. And put your name on it, and this is my front hip yoke. Cut 1 pair, on the fold. Not Cut 2. Okay. Cup 1 pair. In this instance it doesn't
really matter if you Cut 2, but say Cut 2, but really if it's going
to be like on the back, you're going to have a seam, it'll be cut 1 pair because
you don't want to cut 2, because you could cut
to the same way up. And I've seen it
happen in production. Big disaster. Okay, let's go on to the back. So you may just have
one dart in your back which is fine, perfectly okay. Don't forget to mark in your notches, make a mark at
the bottom of that slit. Pivot out from the
base of the dart and match it up with the
beginning of the dart. Make a mark at the
bottom of that slit again. It's just to give you
a reference of how much excess there
might be in your hip seam. Fold it out to where the original
notch mark is. Mark and your sideseam, make a mark here. Okay. So you can
see I don't really have too much excess there
that I have to worry about. But as I said, I
mean I could have made this a shorter depth here, so I wouldn't have had
to worry about that. But again, if I had a longer, a much deeper yoke at the
back, as part of your design, again, you would have to make a seam because your behind, would be sitting around about, the fullness of your behind would be sitting around
about here and you'd have too
much excess sticking out. So you would have to if
it came down further, it might be that, you
would have to make a seam like this,
but in that instance, you can actually close up this
line here and just make it one seam like that there. And if you had an
extended waist, grow-on waist, then you can bring that
line all the way up. Like this here, it really
is a lovely line actually. Okay, so let's reshape
the hip seam now. My back is Cut 2 pairs because I'm going to have a
zip down the centre back. So I've cut out my front
and back hip yokes. And now I'm going to line up the, make sure that the hip line flows evenly
all the way through. First of all, I'm
going to check that the side seams are running,
that are matching, the seams are matching
on the side seams. So just again, just check
it with the tracing wheel. Not sure if you can see
the tracing wheel marks in the camera, but I'm lining up seam on seam like this just to where it
starts to straighten off. And I'll put a bit
of tape there. Now you can see how it's
dipping up straightaway. So I have to fix this. But again, it might
change after I make my toile, it might
be too pointed, but I won't know until we
make it up in fabric. Add my seam, my sewing seam, make it one centimetre, you can make it 12 millimetres, half an inch if you
want. It's up to you. Again, you can use
your French curve, I just, because as I said I use
this ruler for everything. It's easy. It's my new line. My front notch. Let's cut this out. I have my front hip
and my back hip. Now, if you want, I mean, you could actually make
this on a folded piece of paper and have it just
open out so it'll just be Cut 1 pair, instead of Cut 1 Pair on the Fold like I've got it here, I always just do half patterns. I don't want to
waste so much paper and it takes a lot
longer anyhow, so, okay. So now we're ready to split, spread and slash
the lower part of the skirt to create
the flared skirt.
5. Slash & Spread The Skirt: So now we're on to flaring
out the skirt section, and as you can see, I've divided the front
and the back skirt into approximately
even sections. I'm going to cut up
almost to the very top, just leave about
five millimetres. I'm just over an eighth of
an inch at the top there. I'm going to slash each one and then I'm going to
spread them out onto another piece of paper to, to create the flare. Now you can actually use
pi to create your circle, measurement pi to
create your circle. But I'm just showing you the very basic way of
making a flared skirt because this is really
for beginners course. And what I'm showing you here is exactly the same
as if you'd used pi to create your circle. Okay, So let's start cutting. It's really good if you have a sharp pair of scissors here, makes life a lot easier. Okay, my table is not
big enough to create the skirts so, back onto the floor. I actually forgot to mention
that I made my cuts around about oh just over 4
centimetres apart. That's around about
nearly 2 inches, I think it is. My hip
measures 80 centimetres, 100 centimetres. So if you have a bigger
hip or a smaller hip, just make your cuts accordingly. Make them nice, quite
close together because the further apart that you put your dividing lines
for your cuts, the less even the flare is. So this will be a
really nice even flare. Okay, so now I've pulled
the camera off the tripod and hopefully I don't shake it around too much. I just wanted to show you, because I'm
working on the floor, I just wanted to show you
closely what I'm doing. So you can see how I've
spread everything out evenly. 20 centimetres apart, I've done it on my skirt and 10
centimetres centre front. That's because the
front is on the fold, so you still get the
full 20 centimetres. And this is the hip seam with
the seam allowance added, and notice that this is not squared out it
actually dips down. That's because every
one of these dips is causing the flare. So when you cut it out, it will be slightly dipping
down here, not squared out. And the side seam, I've actually taken off the
straight grain and flared it out slightly so
that when you sew it, it's not going to have
any tight tension, it'll have a little
bit of stretch. Where the ruler is, is actually
going to be the selvedge. I mean, you could turn the skirt around and cut the
centre front on the bias, takes a lot of fabric, but my goodness me, it's beautiful. Has a
beautiful drape to it. Just make sure that
before you actually cut the side seams
of your skirts, make sure that you
measure this line, the seam line on the skirt, and make sure it matches exactly to the seam line on your yoke, and also that these notches
are in the same position. The same applies to the centre front and, just bending down on
the floor pick up the other skirt, so much paper here. Do the same here. Measure the seam line from
centre front to the side seam, you know, before you cut the side seam, and make sure
that it measures exactly the same as the seam on
your yoke. Okay. You'll notice I've
actually also marked, this is my centre front line, and this is going to be
going on the weft grain, and that's going to be
going on the selvedge grain or the warp grain
because it's so long. But I've also marked bias
line on both the skirts because I just might turn it around and
cut it on the bias, if I have enough calico that is.
6. Cutting & Sewing The Toile: Okay, So now we're ready to
cut out this mammoth skirt. So it's always best
to try and get a wide width fabric when
you are doing swing, these really flared swing
skirts, not always possible, especially if you
find a fabric that's narrow width and
you love the surface design of it. As you can see on this,
this is calico that's 150 centimetres wide and I
think that's about 60 inches. I would still have
to put a join into, if you look at the
left hem there, left front hem, I'd have
to put a join there. And this is using
the warp grain, the selvedge grain
as my centre front. Now I'll swing it around
and I'll show you the weft grain going
along the skirt. This is the warp grain, the selvedge grain
going along the skirt. So I would have to put that
back up at the top there. That has to go
down here as well. And I think this takes
about 2.20 metres of 150 centimetre wide fabric, 60 inches wide. 2.20metres, I think it's about 2.15 yards. I'm not really too sure.
Now I'll show you the bias. So here you see the skirt
laid out on the bias, and I would have to flip that there, that's
the right back, I'd have to flip that up
there as well for my pair. And then my yoke pieces
would be cut down here. I think I'm going to cut my little toile out
on the bias grain. This takes approximately 2.80 metres of fabric around
just over 3 yards, I think it is. Doesn't it look fabulous? Feels wonderful, and
it's only calico. Microphone cord out other way. Feels really lovely,
now this is a full circle, so this is half a circle on the front and half a
circle on the back. But can you imagine what
it'd be like if I had a full circle on the front
and full circle on the back, which a lot of those dresses
and skirts were, gorgeous. It just feels so lovely, just wearing it as well. And if it has gathers in it, it just swings so beautifully, but the gathers do make
it a heavier skirt. So what I've decided
with my skirt as I will lessen the
depth a little bit, probably by about
three-quarters of an inch, 2 centimetres, because it
is a little bit big there. As I explained when I
was making my yoke, I said it might, because I had
a little bit of excess there and I would probably have the seam that to make it fitting, to make it fit perfectly. But I think what
I'll do is I'll just make a little bit shorter. I think it'd be
more aesthetically pleasing anyhow. I can't stop swinging.
7. Extending The Back Hem: So as you can see, these
patterns are so big, I have to work on the floor, I just don't have the
table space for it. So what I'm going to do
now is I'm actually going to drop the back hem about 15 centimetres and I'm
not really sure what that is in imperial off
the top of my head. And I'm just going to drop it slightly and then bring it up just pass the side seam, just up to about probably just past the sideseam up
to the front skirt. And you'll see what
a beautiful line it creates is it just drops down. And then you can envisage that you can make
it even longer for train for a wedding dress
or wedding skirt as well. But it really is a lovely line. So I thought I'd just
sew a little piece onto the end of my new
skirt and show you. So here you can see I've
cut the back lower. If I stand away so you can see the
full length of the skirt you can see it's dropping. I've dropped it 15
centimetres at the back, but it creates a lovely
line, doesn't it? So you can imagine if that were a wedding train on top
of the skirt as well. It's beautiful.
8. Cutting & Sewing A New Swing Skirt: So I'm hoping I'm going to
keep this camera steady. I'm standing on a rickety chair, but I wanted to
show you the skirt laid out on three
different widths. And the bias grain. You can cut this on
the straight grain, but I strongly advise
you to cut it on the bias grain
because that's how this beautiful skirt
will swing around. You can see my pieces
where I actually joined, so I dipped the hem at the back. So you may not have
done that on your one, but this bit from the
ruler to the edge of the table leg Is
150 centimetres. I'll show you on 110 and I'll show you on 90
centimetres as well. So you can see I've put my, my set square there, that's a 45-degree angle, so that's a bias
grain and that's your straight grain there
centre front. This here Is your right back skirt, there's the centre back. That grain must flow through
to the left back as well. Okay, so there's your
centre left back, this is your left back skirt. Do not mitre your centre back
seam if you have a centre back seam because
that will throw your grains off for the side seam. This side seam here, the right back side
seam matches up with the right
side of the front, so it mitres. I'll show you in a minute,
I'll rearrange the patterns, I'll show you. This here, this grain here and that left
side seam there matches up with the left side
seam on the front. So I will show you exactly
what I'm talking about. But it's very important, especially if you're
going to be cutting silk gowns that are bias cut, very important to
make sure the side seams are mitred if you've got a centre back seam. If you haven't
got a centre back seam, things do change. I won't go into it here. It can be quite technical
and quite tricky. Okay, So this is 150
centimetres or 60 inches. The gaps, the gaps there are for your front yoke and
also your back yoke. And also give you a metreages
and yardages as well. Also, you'll note that I haven't
got my facings out here. My facings are actually pinned underneath the
skirts at the moment. But I'll do a metreage
for those as well. But currently at
a 150 centimetres this is taking 3
metres of fabric. You can imagine it takes a
lot more with the facings, although it does make a
really beautiful skirt. It really helps when you've
got weight in the hem, it helps it swing out. So here you can see this a 110 centimetres wide,
45 inches, and you can see you have to
start putting joins in. And those joins
must be parallel to the straight grain line
or the warp grain. Okay, you don't want
them off grain, otherwise they'll
start to wobble and stretch. So that's
your left back, this is your right back. Actually couldn't fit
the full skirt on the floor because the
lounge suite as in the way. But you can see here
on my front skirt there's a join,
the pattern is folded over in readiness for the join. So you have to cut it and
then add a seam allowance. And then those pieces there, that extra piece there
that you see there, anywhere where you've
got to join it you have to fill those in on another part of the
fabric way they fit in. And again, always
going the same way. Don't top and tail
your patterns, you'll end up with
shading in your fabric. Okay, So now I've put the
side seams together to explain what I'm talking about,
mitring the side seams. So there's your bias grain there and your bias grain
here on your right back. They're mitred at
the side seams. They're mitred. And this is your left side seam. So I've just drawn a line to show
you that that's the weft grain because a straight grain
goes down that way. or the warp grain,
but they're on, both the sideseams are
on the same grain. You'll notice that
I've cut my hem facing deeper at the back, so that when you're walking, you see the actual fabric, you don't see a
line of the facing. Again, it does take more fabric, but I wanted to explain that, but it does look
really, really nice. Also, I'm just going to
show you it's really, really important that
if you do use a facing, instead of just doing
a machine turn up, you must cut the facing on exactly the same grain as
the rest of the skirt, because if not, you'll
have, I don't think I can show you here,
but it will twist. If you're facing is on
the opposite grain or a different grain to the rest of your skirt, you'll have trouble. It'll start twisting. So this is what
I'm talking about, notice the grain there. That's why I've pinned these
facings together to show you, it is on exactly
the same grain. And it's cut Right-Side-Up. All these pattern pieces
are Right-Side-Up. Very, very important to mark
your pattern like that. So this is the right back. Notice the grain there that's
going across that way, it's the same with
your hem facing, it's going the same way. Okay. If I can swing the front skirt around to show you, the hem facing is split in two because it
takes a lot of fabric. But again, the grain, the grain is like this
coming down here like this, that side, it's the same grain. Again, Right-Side-Up. The pattern is always marked
Right-Side-Up. And the same, notice the
grain's going that way there, the same with the facing. Okay? Very, very important. So I'm just going to show
you where the joins are in a 110 centimetre wide fabric, this is what my
skirt was cut in. So this is the side seam here. And then this is the join that
I had to do in the front. And there's the one at the back. So it really depends
on your print as to how well it's hidden. If it's a plain fabric,
it's going to show up. I'd probably strongly
recommend not going narrower than
a 110 centimetres. Unless it's an absolutely divine
print that you can't resist.
10. Bonus: Recycling An Old Dress Into A New Skirt~Pt 1: I think there's enough volume in this skirt to be able to make
a really fabulous 50s skirt. Wonderful, great, this is
good value, a good buy today. So I thought I would show
you another little skirt that can be made using
the same hip yoke. Now, this was a dress that I
bought from the Op Shop for about £6 and I unpicked
and washed everything and this was originally
the back bodice, it was only a very short
bodice and this was the front. So I've remade it into a hip yoke, I've had to patch up, I don't know if you can see the seams here, I've had to patch up seams from the
original waistband to make it wide enough for my front hip yoke and
this is my back hip yoke. So this was my
original skirt block and then we made the hip
yoke, pivoting out the dart, the same on the back. And all I've done
is the measurement, from the waist
down to the hip line, I've just traced that off again. I've just traced off the rest of the front skirt and traced off the rest of the back skirt. And now what we're going to do is we're going to
spread this pattern here and make it a gathered skirt then stitch it
onto my hip yoke. Now, I don't have much fabric from the
original dress to play with, so this is only going to be a very small amount of gathers. This is the front and
this is the back. So my back skirt is going to have a centre back seam because I have a zip in the centre back. So what I'll do is, I get that piece out of the way. I'm going to be spreading, just moving it like
this, spreading, moving a bit more,
spreading so that I make a gathered skirt with a
little bit of swing in it. You could easily just make a straight square and gather it, but you won't have any swing, and I just want to
utilize as much as the fabric that I have
available to me here, which you can see is not much. But it just I just wanted
to give you another option, if you don't want to
use the big swing skirt because it does take
a lot of fabric and this just gives
you a different look. Okay, let's start. Also, I've got to
take into account how much fabric I have
to play around with. So for example, I have approximately 46
centimetres on the double, which is about 18 inches. So that's 46
centimetres at the waist. Then at the at the hem I have approximately
70 centimetres, which is what's that, that's
about nearly 28 inches. So I just have to bear
that in mind that when I'm spreading my
pattern, it's got to fit it within
those measurements there. Okay I'm going to show you
a couple of ways that you can slash and spread
your pattern. The first one is I'll just physically move the
pattern across and then the next way is I'll
physically slash the pattern, but it's exactly the
same process. Okay? So I've actually
divided my pattern up into 1,2,3,4, sections, but there's 5 pieces to
put fullness into, 1,2,3,4,5.
11. Recycling An Old Dress Into A New Skirt~Pt 2: I'm just going to pull the paper and because
I think it's not showing underneath the
camera at that position. Mark in to my fourth
line along, square out. Now this is where it
gets a bit tricky because my curve's going up, so I'll just make a mark there. This is guesswork here now. 8 centimetres. Move along, 4 centimetres, swing out
to the 8 centimetre mark. Make it cross there. I've
done that, I've done that. Then draw into the side seam, 4centimetres, I shall
do it from the edge. 4 centimetres, 8 centimetres. I might pull it
back a bit further. Put my square against, it's a
slightly, a slight curve here, yours might be even more curved, but try and square it against
the actual side seam. Move it out to the
4 centimetres, hold it and swing
it out to the full 8 centimetres. Actually, I might bring mine in a little bit because my fabric is a little bit, it's
finishing at this point here, and I actually want to
add a little bit of swing onto the side seams. This is not showing under
the camera and move it back. I just wanted to add a
little bit more onto the side seam so it's not
so straight. So I'm going to mark
in my side seam here, There's my notch, always mark
and your notches, you need to line them up when you're sewing with the back seam. I'm just going to
add probably around about a couple of centimetres for extra swing there. So I'll make a mark
as a reference, but I'm going to bring that
line out a little bit there. And now I'll finish off the hem. So let's have a look at that. So this is my new line, it's a bit untidy there. All I'm going to do now is add my seam here. This is my front skirt. And just curve, curve the hem, so it's a nice curve. Then you'll add your
seam allowance on there. whether it's probably going
be a like a centimetre or 1.5, five-eighths of an inch hem, whatever you want. I'm going to leave it
because I suspect this is already too long for
the fabric that I have. And then, this is what's
going to gather into my hip seam here. Now unfortunately because I don't have
a lot of fabric. I really like it to have at least
have 2-to-1 gathers. In other words, twice
the measurement It's going to go back to, I don't have it here and I know that straight away, I can
see it straight away. If I put my pattern there, I can see that it's not really, it's going to be a little
minimal, but it'll be okay. It's fine fabric, so unfortunately won't show up
as much as that I'd like to. So you'd write on here, gather into whatever
that measurement is. So this is, this
determines gathers. Okay, so in this instance I'm going to be using the same
skirt for the back as well. And I'll add a little bit
of swing for the centre back seam and then add a
seam allowance on because I've got a
zip in my skirt. So this is the new
pattern piece. Let's cut it in my fabric. So if it's too confusing just to move the
whole pattern piece because those lines can get
a little confusing at times. This is just slashing the pattern and then
just moving it out like this ends exactly. You can see it's exactly
the same process. When you, before you
slash the pattern, just make some marks on each piece at
different positions so you don't get confused if the patterns fly
all over the place. Okay. So as you can see, this is the 4
centimetres I moved out 8 centimetres at
the hem, 4,4,4,4,8,8,8,8. And that's the piece the little swing that I
added onto the side seam. So when I was teaching, spreading and gathers in class for my students
along time ago, the students understood
this a lot easier just to be able to slash the pattern
and physically move it out. Okay.
12. Congratulations & Thank You: So now you know how
to make a 50s swing skirt. So as you can see, it looks fabulous on
a regular or a curvy lady. It really is one of
the loveliest styles to wear, you feel absolutely fantastic and when you're swinging around and on the dance floor, or can you imagine
a wedding dress? How gorgeous! In fact, I was filming a
piece yesterday for this class at a garden
centre nearby here, and they have a café and
everything attached to it, it's absolutely gorgeous, the gardens are divine. And I was getting a
little upset because I was trying to do the
video, making mistakes, and then I was conscious of people watching
me all the time. And in the end, a couple of ladies came up to
me and just said, 'We're sorry for staring, but the skirt is
absolutely beautiful, I've never seen anything
so gorgeous,' and I calmed down then and a few people at a table nearby
clapped. So I sort of lost the
self-consciousness, but I was actually
quite proud of myself. So this is the effect that it
had on people. Wonderful. So just to recap on what
you've learnt in this class, you've used either
the basic skirt block that I taught in
the first class, or you have your own
straight skirt pattern, or you have an
A-line skirt pattern. So you've used that, you've made a hip yoke and then you've learnt how
to use the base of the skirt, spread it out to a half circle for the front and the back to make
a full circle skirt. But you've also learnt
how to make a more conservative flared,
gathered skirt. Now, as I said, I was a bit limited
in this because I was using an Op Shop dress. So I didn't have a lot
of fabric to play with. But you can make this much more voluminous than what
I have done here. So you have two skirts in one, which can also be added
onto a bodice to make a dress. How fabulous that? I really hope you've
enjoyed this class. I know these skirts are not the
easiest to make and I was actually debating whether
to make this class or not. They take a bit of maths, I'm not great at maths, so if I can do it, you can do it. Okay. So I can't wait to see
what amazing creations you post to the gallery,
the fabric that, the metreage that I've
given you for the calico in the notes
and metreage and yardage is the same metreage and yardage you'll need for your fabric. Okay, so just be
aware that if you going to cut it in a 36 inches, 90 centimetre wide fabric, you're going to have
to put a lot of joins and it takes more fabric. So I'd probably advise
against that and stick to either
45 inches, 110 centimetres, or 150
centimetres, even better. So if you do have any questions, please just post them
under the Comments, and that way all
the other students can see them at the same time. And also please do post a Review because that helps me as a teacher to know if
I'm on the right track, or you might have some
great suggestions, so please just
post away, I'm all ears. And also it helps
Skillshare as well. Thank you so much for
taking this class. I really do appreciate it and can't wait to see
you in my next class. Bye.