Create A Fabulous 1950s Swing Skirt | Victoria Hannah | Skillshare
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Create A Fabulous 1950s Swing Skirt

teacher avatar Victoria Hannah, Artist Designer Patterncutter

Watch this class and thousands more

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Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      Intro

      2:52

    • 2.

      Your Project

      1:55

    • 3.

      The Hip Yoke~Pt 1

      11:23

    • 4.

      The Hip Yoke~Pt 2

      10:16

    • 5.

      Slash & Spread The Skirt

      5:47

    • 6.

      Cutting & Sewing The Toile

      4:20

    • 7.

      Extending The Back Hem

      3:15

    • 8.

      Cutting & Sewing A New Swing Skirt

      8:09

    • 9.

      A Fabulous New 1950s Swing Skirt

      0:44

    • 10.

      Bonus: Recycling An Old Dress Into A New Skirt~Pt 1

      10:09

    • 11.

      Recycling An Old Dress Into A New Skirt~Pt 2

      8:43

    • 12.

      Congratulations & Thank You

      3:31

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About This Class

1950s fashion was all about an excess of fabric, especially after the restrictions of the war years. The voluminous skirts were, and still are, an absolute dream to wear. 

Using the basic skirt block or A-Line skirt pattern from my previous classes or, if you have your own basic pattern, I will demonstrate:

~ How to make the hip yoke by manipulating the waist darts.

~ Spread the lower straight skirt evenly to create a full circle flare.

~ How to place the patterns on the warp, weft and bias grains.

~ Lengthen the back hem for a possible train.

~ Clarify the pattern markings.

~ Slash and spread the lower straight skirt for a gathered version.

~ Make hem facings.

This is a more detailed class than my first two classes but I do go through the process carefully so I still consider it for Beginners.

Meet Your Teacher

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Victoria Hannah

Artist Designer Patterncutter

Teacher

Hi! I'm Victoria, Artist/Designer/Teacher/Writer living in Sydney, Australia. Originally from Auckland, NZ, I've also lived in Melbourne, plus a couple of very long stints in England.

During my fashion career, I worked for high profile designers, large corporate companies and also had my own bridal and evening gown studio. My patternmaking strengths are certainly in tailoring and eveningwear, specialising in Plus Sizes whilst in the UK, but I'm also a draper.....something quite different to flat patternmaking. It takes patience and time but is so rewarding at the end!

Nowadays I have the good fortune to be able to pick and choose the companies I freelance for, although most of my time is now involved with my art and surface design, slowly improving my Photoshop skills. I ... See full profile

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Level: Beginner

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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.