DIY Vintage: Design and Sew your own 50s-style Skirt!

1. Introduction: Hi, I'm Ali J. From Ali and Jackson dot com. I'm a mostly home taught soloist with a passion for the styles of the fifties and sixties, but without the catch in this, constantly making this full gathered skirt with a flat way. Stand in a zipper if you love the styles of the fifties and sixties, but maybe you can't afford true vintage or you can't find it in your style or size, maybe you just need something to wear out tonight. If you have a little bit of Sony experience, you can join us and we'll be creating this amazing skirt yourself. It'll fit perfectly and it won't look from made. You won't need to know more than how to save a straight line. It's so you'll be so impressed with what you mean. 2. Your Project: in this class will be making this beautiful skirt, but it doesn't have to look like this. You can choose any kind of fabric that you'd like. You can make it shorter or longer. It's really up to you. So this is not only a sewing cost, but also it's up to you to design the garment that you'll be creating in the project tab down below. I love to see what you're working on, so please don't hesitate to update in progress shots when you selected your fabric posting inspirational photos, maybe, and then I'd love to see your completed garment when you're done. 3. Searching for Inspiration: there's a 1,000,000 different things you can do with a basic gathered skirt. One of my favorite ways to find inspiration is simply by reading some of the style and sewing blog's that I follow. Or you can always check out Pinterest. They've got tons of good ideas, and I was a just searching something like full gathered skirt or retro skirt. One of my favorite things to do is look at vintage patterns on Etsy. You'd be amazed at some of the beautiful illustrations that they have of styles of the decade. Once you have selected your inspiration, it'll be time to choose your fabric. But before you choose your fabric, I'd love for you to share your inspirational photos down in the project section. I'd love to see what you guys are thinking about when you're designing your skirt. 4. What You'll Need: for this project, you'll need pins. I like to have Ah, flat ruler. A measuring tape, A zipper. Mine is an all purpose polyester is ever like the kind you get from your sewing big box store minds. Nine inches. We could do seven inches, 12 inches if you want to make a really long skirt. Um, always nice to have your seem ripper handy. You'll need a hand sewing needle and you'll want to have some type of hook and I scissors. You'll want an iron in your ironing board. You'll need some interfacing. I just have the cheapie kind of if usable, regular kind. You'll need a weight that matches your fabric and finally, your fabric. I'm using this beautiful kind of painterly blue gingham. It's from Michael Miller fabrics, and I got it online. You can shop, um, for your fabrics online if you want a more specific type of fabric, or this is just a quilting wake on which you can get it, any type of sewing supply store fabric store. The one thing to consider when you're choosing your fabric is how the type of fabric affects the final garment. So, for instance, my quilting weight. Cotton is going to have more of a casual summer look. But if you imagine making this gathered skirt in, for instance, a white floor laying taffeta, you could even wear that to your wedding. Or if you make it in something that has a lot less body, like I so charm ooze or a chiffon, it won't be as full. It will fall street to the floor. Consider your fabric choices with the design of your fabric and the design that you've chosen for the length of the skirt in the fullness of this skirt. 5. Your Pattern Pieces: Once you've selected the fabric that you'll be using and your fabric is washed and dried in the way that you plan to wash and dry, the completed garment will you want to do is get your iron and fed it to the correct temperature. Your iron will have a little thing that says which fabric is appropriate for. Then you want to get your measuring tape and we'll be making our pieces. So the first thing that you want to do is make would be making the waistband, and what you want to do is take your measuring tape and bring it around your waist so that it's comfortable. You don't want it to be too tight. You don't want to be two lives. So for me that's like 26 a half. That's over what I'm wearing because do you plan on talking things into this arm skirt? If we just had that, we wouldn't be able to fit into her skirt. We need to add some seam allowance and we want to add an overlap so that we can have somewhere for the hook and I to be so to money. 26 a half I'm adding about an inch and 1/2. So 28 that's for the overlap. And then I'll add to 5/8 of an inch seam allowance. So balloting media, 28 5 pence inches, 28 5/8 inches and then to 29 a quarter. So that's how wide I want the waistband to be or how long the way stand shall be, Um, and then I'm gonna make my waist and about an inch tall, because that's the way I like it. So we'll have two inches for a front and back of waistband and then again will add 5/8 of an inch and then 5/8 of an inch again for seam allowances. Social. Bring me Teoh about three and 1/4. We're gonna make all of our pattern pieces without using scissors, cause I find that it's easier to tear if you have a fairly sturdy fabric like this. Quilting cotton. If you have like an embroidered fabric or something like that, this won't work as well. But if you have like a plain weave fabric like this, it will work just fine. All right, so I said before that, are we're gonna terror waste, man 23 and 1/4 inches based on how high I wanted my waistband to be. So I'm gonna measure on my fabric three and 1/4 inches and I'm just gonna make a little snip into the salvage edge of my fabric like so. And then when I'm going Teoh just here along the grain of your fabric, I'm just gonna go all the way across. So now I have this long strip of fabric. It's much wider than I need my waistband to be, as you can see, So we'll go back to that original number, which was 29 a quarter, I believe. So. You wanna measure along the line, and then we're gonna do the same thing, make a little snip and then tear along the grain so you should have one longer piece of fabric that will be your waistband and one shorter piece of fabric. You can throw this away, Or sometimes, um, you can keep it and make like, Oh, if you want to make, like, a coordinating bow, a little bow belt or something like that. Um, but I mean, we'll have probably lots of extra fabric, so you don't need to keep it if you don't want to. So our waste man is complete. Next will be making our skirt panel pieces. So this will be the panel off this skirt that's gathered into the waistband. You can either use two or three panels in your skirt, depending on how full you want to make it. So I like a really full skirt. I'll be using three panels, and in this case, I like to put the zipper in the centre back, and then you end up with a seam in center back and two seems that are kind of on the side or aside front. If you only want to use two panels, you can put your your zipper on the side, and then you have another seam down the opposite side. So that way you don't get a seemed on the straight middle of your skirt. Um, you want to measure from your waistband where you want your waistband to hit down to where you would like your skirt to hit, and then don't forget your hem and your seam allowance at the top. So for me, the total of that is about 24 inches if you want to have a mid length, um, mini sort of skirt, but you could make yourself a mini skirt and then have only be, you know, 18 inches long. Or you can make it floor length, in which case you just want to measure the distance from your waist to the floor in the shoes you'll be wearing, and then add a little bit for your home and 5/8 for your seam allowance. And then we'll do the same thing will measure a longer fabric 2 28 So like that and then again will tear across our fabric. And then I have three of these wide panels that will be sewing together to form the skirt part of our skirt. If you have left over fabric, you can save it and make ah, coordinating crop top or make a matching skirt for a friend may be the last thing that we want to Dio is interface are waistband, and I'm also going to interface along. Where are zipper is going to be inserted in our skirt seam. I'm going to give my waistband piece the quick press, and then I've already cut my interfacing, but you wanted to be about arm two inches wide. We're going. Teoh. Cut it a little bit narrower than our waistband, so that it's a little bit less bulky. That way, you won't have your interfacing caught up in the seam allowances when a trim mind down to size. And then you could just follow the manufacturer's instructions for your interfacing. Impressive until it won't peel up. It's nice and stuck, so our waistband fabric are pattern piece is done. Next, we're going to interface. Where are zipper insertions going to be? So I just have to tiny strips of interfacing, and I'm going to put them just along the edge of two of my skirt pieces. So these air going to be this skirt pieces that are on either side of the zipper and I'll just press these down. This stabilizes the area where the zipper is. It's not super important if you have, um, a stable Whoa, then like I do. But if you're working with a slippery fabric or a fabric that has more of a loose weave, you'll definitely want to do this. It really makes the zipper insertion a lot cleaner looking and It also makes it a little bit easier to insert your zipper, in my opinion, because your fabric will be a stable, as as possible. All right, So I have my two interface zipper edges and SMI interface waistbands just here, and our fabric is ready. 6. Constructing your Skirt Panels: So I have my two pieces of fabric and you'll notice I've put them right sides together. The right side is the side of the fabric that has a pattern on it. Um, and I have the two pieces with my zipper interfacing lined up next to each other. So before we go to our sewing machine, then get my pins and I'll start penning my fabric together. Why my pins to be perpendicular to the edge of the fabric, and I'm pinning every few inches all along the side of my skirt pieces. The great thing about sewing a skirt this way, where you just hear cross grain across the fabric is that you'll end up with a salvage on both sides of your fabric, which means a little bit less work for you, because you won't have to finish the interior of the skirt. The fabric is already finished for you, so I'm done with my penning and I'm going to do the same thing on the other side of my skirt. So if you have to skirt pieces, you'll just do the same thing on the other side. Since I have three, I'm going Teoh, insert my other skirt piece on Do the same thing, so place the two pieces right sides together and place your pens every few inches when we're done with all this pinning, what we'll have is a huge tube of fabric that's like three times as wide as your fabric. Originally, Waas. So all of that with will end up being gathered into the waistband. Okay, on and my final two pieces together. I like to say that a lot of sewing, especially if you're using patterns, is just precision cutting, at least when you're first getting started. And you're not super worried about things like, you know, perfect fit or finishing details and you'll notice that all the ends of my fabric are nice and they're all the same link. So that's just kind of, um, one thing to watch out for If you're fabric is kind of wonky, your skirt won't go together as nicely as you would like it to. And our goal is to make a really well finished, professional looking not not homemade looking skirt. So that's a good check for you. So the first sewing that we're going to dio is we're going to so all of the panels of our skirt together, starting with the panel, um, that you have put your interfacing on for your zipper insertion, so you want to align it with the 5/8 mark on your machine. This is where it becomes really important to know your machine because everyone's sewing machine will be different. Mine has little lines on the plate, and then you're going to make your stitch link as long as you can to do a machine basting stitch. So we're gonna go stitching along 5/8 with a long stitch laying and really what you should dio I sometimes don't take out your needles before you go over them. It will extend the life of your needle, your sewing machine needle, and it will extend, um, the life of your machine. All right, so that's about the length of my zipper. What I'm going to do is I'm not going to raise my needle at all. I'm just going to make my stitch length shorter, so usually when I'm sewing or use about two or 2.5 stitch length, and we'll just keep so we back stitch for a few stitches on, then continue down the length of the seam, removing your pins as you go. This isn't a sewing machine course, but you do want to keep in mind that you really want to let your machine guide the fabric, not push it in or pull it out. And And when you get to the end of the seams once again, you want to do a little bit of back stitching to make sure that your semen secure. All right. Then we'll dio the same thing on the other. Um, seems but you won't need to worry about your zipper insertion for these, so you'll just start with your regular stitch length back fits, and then you can just so your whole steam in the same way. If you're sewing on the salvage, make sure that your salvage it. Make sure your line of stitching is outside of the salvage because you don't want to see that on the outside of your completed garment. All right, now you're ready to press. So as you can see, what we have created is this huge tube of fabric that's the skirt and this huge with will in the next step be gathered into the waistband of our skirt. But first we need to press our scenes and insert our zipper. So what we want to do is press are scenes open like so you think my iron cool down a little bit and you're going to do this on all of your seems so you should have two or three eventually will tear out that Stacey or the, um basting stitch, our machine basting stitch Where are Zipper is going to be? But I like doing the basting stitch and then ironing. I think it gives you a little bit more control over your pressing. You don't have to do a mystery and basting stitch. You could just press it at 5/8 of an inch, but I prefer to. So at first, just personal preference, though. And this is where I said, um, if we were using real pattern pieces, not just hearing across the grain, we would have to finish all of these little seam allowances. But since there the salvage edges, they won't come unraveled, so we don't really need to worry about them, which is really nice, especially in your first projects. You don't want to spend your whole time doing federally little finishing steps. You want to get right to the sewing, have something wearable. If you ever forget what fabric ease and you want to make something that coordinates, you'll have all the information right on your selvage inside your skirt. All right, so my three seems are oppressed, and I'm going to return to the one that has my interfacing in it for my zipper insertion. So does ever can be the trickiest part, but we're going to dio a hand pick sipper, which I have chosen for a couple of different reasons. First, for a beginner, I think it offers ah, lot more control over your zipper. And it does not require any special sewing machine feet like a zipper photo invisible zipper foot. Um, since we'll be doing all of our hand stitching just removing the packaging from my zipper, Um, and then secondly, adds a nice vintage touch to your garment. Um, this is a lot more common when people were selling most of their own clothes themselves, like some of us in the sewing community, try to Dio and thirdly adds a really kind of luxurious touch, especially if you're making something fancier than this kind of picnic picnic blanket skirt that I'm making. Um, especially consider this, um, more of like a couture touch. Although this garment is by no means couture. For example, when you think of like a really finally made man suit jacket often along the lapels, they'll be prick stitches on, and that's considered a sign of high quality. So if you have, especially something that it'll show more like a taffeta, some sort of silk if you have these hands stitches showing on the outside of your garment, which he will when we finish our zipper, um, you can consider a mark of pride. Badge of pride. We've got a zipper and we've got our seen our seems currently sewed shut, but we're going Teoh unpick the seam. So the reason that I sewed it again is I just think you get a better press when you're seem has been, um, sewn shut before you press it that way, it's not wiggly, and it blends in really well with the rest of the seem that you've, um, sewn down the remainder of the skirt. Some people just like to sew up to where the Zephyr is going to be and then press in 587 inch. But I just think it's a little bit nicer to do it this way. It doesn't take that much longer. Okay, so now you'll see I have esteem and then I have to folded over edges, and I'm just going to give those a quick press again and then will be begin working on our zipper. So I'm going to put the edge of my zipper tape and align it, unzip my supper and align the edge of my zipper tape with the edge of the, um, the top of my zipper tape with the top of my fabric. You'll notice that the zipper doesn't start for a little while. And that's nice, because we can use our same 5/8 inch when we attach it to the waistband. And then I'm just aligning the teeth of the zipper with the folded over. So, um seem, and I'm going to pin it together. If you know how to dost a zipper on your machine, you can do a lap zipper special on a side seems skirt, or you could do a traditional centre zipper. We could even do it an invisible zipper, if you have the right, um, tools. But I like doing this one. As I said, it gives you a little bit more control, especially if you're new to zippers. It's a little bit of a vintage touch, and I think it's just prettier. So I've penned all the way down my zipper. Mina put one zipper at the bottom of my zipper tape, being sure not to pin it to my sewing board, cover my ironing board cover, and then I'm gonna pin it back up the other side. Okay, So you can actually a zip up your zipper if you're careful not to get your pins and you'll see that on the outside, we have some Dingli old thread from our machine basting. We have a really nice neat insertion, and now all you have to do with hands. So the zipper to the fabric, you can already see the way the zipper is going to work. I think that really de mystify zippers a little bit and makes him seem a lot less intimidating there. They seem scary, but they're really not. So what I've done is I have my handsomely needle and I have my thread I've just stolen from my selling machine doubled up with a knot in the end. So the stitch that we're doing is a back stitch or prick stitch. We're going to start at the end of our one side of our zipper and inserted through the back . Make sure that it's in within the seam allowance, so the tail end of our thread will just end up in our waste plant. So we want to go to the front of the fabric. And then, instead of sowing towards the bottom like we would normally dio, we're going to insert our thread just above where it was. So only over two or three threats were trying to make a small of stitches as possible on the front of the fabric. So you can see you can barely see it. It's just a little dive. Then we're gonna go down the direction that we're actually traveling about 1/4 of an inch and go out to the front again and do the same thing. Draw your thread through. Don't make a not if you can help it. Oh, no. Okay. Dry your fed through and go back in the steam or into the fabric, making a tiny stitch so you can probably barely even see those. That's the idea. So again, we're going to go down about 1/4 of an inch on Make another stitch so you really want these to be as even and as small as you can get them. But if they're not perfect, that's fine. And you'll notice this technique gives you, ah lot of control over where your zipper is inserted, and it also leaves a lot less, um, thread on the outside of your garment. So if you're saying this on a machine, a regular zipper on the machine will have to big long arm rows of stitches on either side of it, and this one will not. So this is a good technique to use. For example, if you're using a pattern fabric like this one, where the stitches would blend in on the white squares, but the machine stitches would really stand out on the blue squares of my gingham, so this will make it a little bit last noticeable. And if anyone does notice, they'll know that you are in possession of some nice sewing skills were their professional . So the stitches on the back of your zipper will not be beautiful. They'll be big ends, kind of ugly. But that's okay. You're really going for beauty on the outside rather than the inside when it comes to handpicked stepper. So what you want to do is just continue all the way down one side of the zipper and then down the other side of the zipper. This style of Zuber does take a little bit longer than just doing it on your machine, but I think, especially if you're new to sewing zippers, it's definitely worth the time for aesthetic reasons. Andi, I think it's worth the hassle because I don't know about you. But when I so zippers on my machine, I often have toe, take them out and reinsert them a few times, and you probably won't have to do that with this. If your threats getting really tingly like minus, you can even put some bees wax so you can see I'm about halfway done with the first side of my zipper, and there's a small row of nearly invisible stretches right along the edge of my super. So when our zippers done, you'll have two rows of these little tiny stitches on either side, they will hardly be noticeable at all. And if anyone does notice them, as I said, it should be impressed if they know what they're thinking about, all right? 7. Gathering your Skirt: So now that are zippers complete. You finished the most difficult part of the project, and we'll move on to actually gathering the waistband of the skirt. What we're gonna do is put our maker stitch link really long again, like we did when we were basing interest, zipper. So what, we're going Teoh, Um, have when we're done with this step is three rows of machine basting stitches and you can do to, but I really suggest doing three. It does make a big difference. It doesn't seem like it would make a huge difference, but it makes it It makes your gathers a lot more Even. So, um, make your stitch length really long, and we're going to make three rows of stitches just right next to each other. So I'm starting mine at about 1/4 um, 1/4 and just seem And I'm starting from where we inserted the zipper, and I'm not going to do a back sit because we're going to use the ends of the themes or the ends of our string to gather our skirt and again just let your machine feed the fabric through and just guided along, making sure you remain in about 1/4 of an interesting allowance. So you wanted When you get to the end of your fabric, just stitch right off the end and leave along a longest tail on your thread, and then we'll do it again. So for this one, I'm gonna move it over a little bit. Maybe like half an inch, Um or just Yeah. So my seam line is now at half a niche. The science seem lines won't be shown on your final garments. They don't have to be perfect. But you do want them to be pretty neat if you can make up, okay. And then, as I said before, it's the third row of stitches gathering. Such is that really makes the difference. So what? This one will be at about about 5/8 of an inch, So that will be our completed seam allowance, but you won't see it. We'll take this road out when we're done. So we're done with our gathering stitches. You can see we have three nice rows of long stitches, and it's gonna be really easy for us. Teoh, gather our skirt using these three rows of stitches and I'll show you We have this huge, long length of fabric with our gathering such, isn't it? And the next step is to gather your fabric into your waistband. So I currently have three pins in what in my waistband. The 1st 2 are on either side at 5/8 of an inch, and the 3rd 1 is just in that inch. So we added on to our waist measurement, um, from the 5/8 of an inch mark. So this shows you from one end to our inside pin. That's how long your skirt is going to be gathered into, so you can see we have a lot of gathering to Dio. Luckily, it's not hard will you want to do is first folder skirt in half so that your zippers are lined up and you can find what's right in the middle of your skirt. Andi put a pin there and then full your waistband and half so that the inside pin and your other your opposite and 5/8 of an inch seem line pin, um, are on the same spot and fold that in half. Put a pin there as well. Now we have marked on our waistband where each edge of our skirt is going to go and where the center of our skirt panels will be, and we're going to put them right sides together. So with your waistband facing up with right side up, take your skirt with right side facing down and align the two center pins. You also want Teoh a line the raw edges of your fabric and then teak one zipper end of your skirt and align it with one end of your waistband and pin that in and do the same on the opposite side if you want to. You could make more marks from like the quarter marks, but I don't think it's always necessary. Just depends. No, I'm all tangled up. Okay, so now you'll see why we made those beautiful three rows of machine basting stitches. So on one side of your skirt, you want to take the three basting stitches, the top thread from the top side of your fabric. Do you want to start pulling them together? So hold on to all three. Andi, start pulling your fabric if you can have wrap it around your finger. But don't cut off your circulation. You'll see there were creating these really beautiful gathers. Smush your gathers down the gathering stitches. If this isn't working, you might be holding both sides of the machine stitches. So the machine you might be holding both the bomb and such, and the needle thread, and you just want to be holding one side. It doesn't matter which side you're holding, but that allows the fabric to slide around on the thread. So keep gathering, and especially if you're using three panels of pretty wide fabric, you'll probably end up just gathering it as much as you can. And you won't really needs to worry about spacing out your gathers when you get to the end . So if you have to gathering stitches in a row, you can still do this. But it won't be as neat, and it won't be as easy to slide them all down. They tend to get kind of twisted around each other, which is why I really suggest 83. It doesn't take that much longer, and it makes a big difference when you're gathering. Sometimes I skip it, and I'm always disappointed in myself because the final result just doesn't look as even auras need so you'll see him. Our fabric. Now we're trying to go from here to here on our waistband, and now our fabric is only this much bigger. So we're getting there. And I think these, um, neatly gathered ruffles into a flat way spanned the fact that there so regular and even is what really elevates this skirt above that kind of like elastic waistbands, like paper bags style skirt that you'll find tutorials for. This is a much more polished look. And even though I'm doing mine in this kingdom, you can imagine that this would be really stunning and, um, a sparkly fabric or a satin. Let's see, we're almost there almost halfway, as you can see, or gathers are about the same length as our waste man. Now you can kind of girls sneak peek How? Well, look, So I'm gonna put in. They're looking pretty even gonna put in a couple of. Hence, we might end up moving them, Um, and you can anchor your thread around, um, the pin that you put in the bottom. I'm just doing a little figure eight, like you would see on a sailboat or something. Um, and then what? you're going to do is just kind of smush around your gathers so that they look really even so, if there is a spot that's really gathered or a spot that's got some flatness to it, you just want to make sure that it looks pretty regular all the way around and then start pinning your gathers to your skirt, and you should notice that the raw edges of your fabric are still a wind, all right, it's looking good already. 8. Attaching your Skirt to your Waistband: Okay, so after all those machine basing gathering such as this is going to go by like lightning, what we're doing now is we're going to So our gathers in our screwed panels to our waistband. And once again, we're going to go back to our regular stitch links, like 2 2.5 We're going to use a 5/8 seam allowance and we're going Teoh, be careful. Try not to run over any pins. I use a 1,000,000 pens, lime gathering and, um, securing the gathers to the skirt just so they don't move around. So I may hit a couple of that. Try not to. So I'm going to start with a little back stitch securing the ends, and then we're off. And after this, your skirt will really start looking like a skirt. I like to do this step with the waste fans on the bottom and the gathers on the top. Um, that way you can kind of adjusted gathers a little bit as you go, and you can feel with the homes of your fingers, um, the pads of your fingers, rather to see if the waistband is folded under at all. If it is. It's not a big deal. We can just unpick a little bit, Um and re so it. But you can usually feel it. Okay, So our waste man is attached to our skirt panel, and I'm just looking on the back side. There's a few pins that I missed. I'm taking those out really quickly. Sometimes there kind of buried in the gathers and you'll see now you have beautiful gathers , um, into a nice, clean looking waste, Mia. So what I've done now is I've placed our skirt over the edge of our ironing board, and I'm going Teoh press our waistband. Um, and be careful, not You don't really want to press your gathers and flatten them out. You just wanna press the waste fans, and you can see the gatherers are pointing up. Those will be enclosed in the waistband. When we are, um, finished attaching our waistband tourist skirt. We're gonna do the same thing all around our skirt, and you can take a good look at your beautiful gathers that you've made. Yours might look a little bit different than mine, depending on if you've used to panels of your fabric or one panel or three like I am. And they'll also look different depending on the fabric that you chose. So that gets back to the design of the garment that you've chosen. And then we'll turn it inside out again and look at inside of the garment. We'll take our flat ruler and you want to find 5/8 of an inch, and usually I just kind of eyeball it once I have it figured out. Um, once you have been sewing 5/8 of an inch on every garment you make, you get OK, figuring out, what, 587 inches? So we're pressing down the seam, a light allowance opposite our gathers. All right, so our skirt is really starting to take shape. Now you can see where our overlap is going to be. We've got our nice zipper installed and we're almost done with our waistband. Our next step is we're going to fold down our waistband, so we're folding in half. Really? Um and then we're going to be sewing this from the right side of the fabric on our sewing machine, and you really want to make sure that you catch this part of your fabric while you're selling from the top, so you can kind of feel it and, um, really rely on your fingers to overlap it just a little bit. And then we're going to pin it in place from the front so that we can still remove our pins as we go. See, you'll see. I have the pin on the front on the backside of the pin, goes through and catches the back side of our waste fans. So this little edge of fabric, um, snap some of the strings. Um, you just want to fold that in over the very edge of your zipper tape and give it a little press. And then when you fold your waist band down like that, it'll just be enclosed in the edge. So it'll be super neat. So just like you did that the other side, we're going to fold it in, but we don't want to fold it in a Sfar, as we did on the other side to line up with our zipper. We're just gonna fold it in a little bit again. It's our 58 steam alone's my it's a little bit smaller and then fold it down so what we're doing is we're making the tab that will overlap the skirt so that you can hook, um, hook the waistband together with your hook, and I So once again, you just wanna do the same thing, overlap it a little bit. I'm pin it through. So the other side is caught, and then you can just pin your tab a little bit, and then you have a couple of options. You can either just hand. So this tab I'm closed. But when I saw my zipper up, my tab is going to be on the underneath of the supper. You can see how neat that looks already. We haven't even so nit my tabs gonna be on the underneath side of the zipper. So I'm just going to when I get to the end of sewing my waistband just top stitch around the edge really quickly since I will be head in any way. Um, and now we're ready. Teoh, go back to our machine to So are waistband on. Remember? We want to catch the back of it, but we are going to so from the front. And what we're gonna do is called stitching in the ditch, which I think is a horrible name. But it is evocative, I guess. So you're going to put your needle exactly at the point where your waistband meets your skirt gathers and what you're going to be doing is sewing right along the edge so you don't want to. So on the waistband, you do want to. So on the gathers that is close to the waistband, as you can possibly get it some tutorials that will teach you how to make a gathered skirt like this. Or, if you have, like a sewing book, they'll want you to slip stitch from the back side and just hand stitched the way Stand down. I'm all for efficiency or expediency. So I think where it matters. Like with the zipper. You do want to do a hand stitch, Um, and with him will be hand stitching. But for this it will just be covered up by the gathers. And so I don't really I think that it's necessary to hand such and this is way quicker. So as you can see your I'm stitching as close as I can possibly get Teoh the way spanned without sitting on top of it and you'll see it's right along the edge. And when your skirt is on, it'll just be hidden by the gathers and you won't be able to see it at all. Which is why I don't usually bother hand stitching some sewing machines. Have a stitch in the Dutch foot or add sitting foot. Um, but for simplicity's sake, we're not going to use that. We're just using our regular foot and being very careful. So we're at our little tab here, end. And as I said, what we're gonna do is just slide over a little bit so that we're actually on top of our waistbands. Now, once we're past the zipper will be on top of our always fan, and I'm just gonna so down the edge and then to make a nice Chris corner, we'll put our needle down, lift up our presser foot and rotate and put our presser foot back down again. Um, and that'll get us a nice square. And remember, none of this will be You won't be able to see any of this on the completed garment because it will all be underneath the other side of the waistband. But you can see Now we have our nice waistband all made, and we'll just give it a final press and then we'll be ready to him and we'll be done. So the final step in, um, making our waistband is just to once again give it a quick press and try to avoid pressing down your Gobblers? Uh, yes, women do press and move it around. Once you've worn your skirt and you've washed it and you want to wear it again and it's all wrinkly, you can do the same thing. Just press the waistband and then you'll want to press the arm the ham and press the bottom of the skirt. And you can kind of, um, you can kind of sneak up the skirt into the gathers like this. I won't do the whole thing now, but you kind of sneak into the gathers like that, and that will give you a nice crisp look without squishing your gathers down. So I think our waistband it's looking good, and you can see it's looking more and more like a finished skirts 9. Finishing Touches: So our last step is hemming and the first part of humming is we're going Teoh fold over a little bit and actually, I'm gonna do a little bit more. Um, just so I can use the lines on my fabric to guide my pressing so we're gonna fold it over once. And this is where doing only two panels of your fabric gives you sort of an advantage because I'm going to be pressing and humming. I'm folding up about an inch, which is a little bit more than what I budgeted for when I tore my fabric into lengths. But I don't really like a fairly deep hem, Um, which allows me a little bit of wiggle room. So in the next step, I'll just make him a little bit less deep, and then I can still have it the length I want. When you get to the intersection of two scenes, my fabric is pretty thin, so I'm just gonna leave it like this. If you have a really bulky fabric, you could cut a little notch in either side where you're going to fold it just to take a little bit of the thickness out. Um Or you can just trim your seems where you're going to him. But for most of you who are probably using Ah, quilting weight, cotton, like this one, Um or, uh, dinner kind of satin or taffeta. You won't really run into that issue that much. Okay, so we have turned up the bottom of our fabric all the way around the skirt, and the next step is to turn it up once again, and that will make your nice hem that is totally finished on the inside. And it'll look really nice. Um, if you aren't sure what length you want your skirt to be, exactly, you can try it on this point and market or measure it with a tape down to the part where you want to stop. I'm the skirt, but I feel pretty comfortable with my skirts. Um, with the way I measured my skirt. So I'm just gonna fold folded up again and start pressing this way. So I'm voting my skirt up about three inches, and once again, I'm just gonna use the lines on my fabric. If you have a pattern fabric, it can be helpful to look at the motifs and follow the motifs all the way around the hem of the skirt. One reason I chose this style of skirt instead of, say, a circle skirt or something similar is because with a dirndl skirt like this with just this just me of rectangles. Um, hemming is way easier. You don't have to, um, kind of ease the fabric into the You don't have to ease the fabric of the him into the skirt because it's all the same whip. So you can see this presses really nicely. You're just making a bunch of citrate folds all the way across your skirt into the whole circle. Circular ham. And I'm not putting in a bunch of pins because I think my creases should hold. Okay, um, in this nice, crisp cotton. But if you're working with something a little bit slippery er, you could put some pins in tow, hold your hem in place. The other thing you could do is put some pins in and then double check, um, to make sure that you like the length, So just press your home and then put your pins in, um, up top at the top of your home, and then when you try it on, your him will show that I'm completed. Lee. There's nothing worse than making an entire skirt and then discovering this to shore door that's two on. You can just make a short there, but and as you can see, it's the same depth all the way around, which is a wonderful benefit to making this style of skirt, as opposed to I'm a circle skirt or a Gord skirt, where you have to pay a little bit more attention to the depth of the ham and it looks like we're back to the beginning. All right, we're ready to start doing some more hand sewing everyone's favorite thing. Okay, so I've gotten a long strand of Fred, and although I used it doubled in the zipper, just going to use it in one piece. Um, so not on one end of it. And no, not on the other end. So it's extra long end. It's kind of floating free. And what we're gonna do is we're going to do just a little slip stitch all the way around the edge of the skirt. So get some TV shows, get some podcasts. This is gonna take a while, but it will be worth in end. As I said when we were doing the zipper, this is one of the things that does make a big difference in the final outcome of your garment. You won't be able to tell if the seams are hand zone and you won't be able to tell if you're waistband is slip stitch to the inside. But you will be able to tell if your hem is sloppily done. Although if you're going for a really casual look, you can just tops touches this and this whole thing would take, like, two minutes. So you may want to consider that So we're going to do is I just brought my threat up from the front to begin, and then I'm just going to slip stitch. I'm going to get a little bit of my hem and just a little bit of my fabric and pull it through. So if you have a thicker fabric or something with an unusual we've, you can try and just get a couple of the threads from the back of the fabric without even going through to the front side at all. But if you have a plain weave like I dio, um, that would be pretty hard, so we'll just try and get as little as the front fabric as we can. Those try and get a little tiny bit. Pull it through and I'm trying to make my stitches about, like, half a nen church apart. Unless you're really tough on your clothes. These don't have to be like, really strong stitches. They're just going to keep the hem from falling down. Do make them smaller, though, then the heels of your high heels, because I have poked through the hem of a skirt with my heels before. And that's not pleasant, even though it's not beautiful on the inside. Outside, you'll see you can hardly even see the stitches at all. They're practically invisible, and the part that you can see it just will match your prick stitches on your zipper. Soto look really nice, Very professional. On the outside, Our final step is to add a closure to our waistband. Sore zipper goes up to the top of our skirt, and then what we'll be doing is adding, Ah, hook and I and mine looks like this, so we'll be putting the hook on the short side of our waste, and and we'll put the bar on our tab so that when it's done, you'll be able to hook the two together, and I'll give you a really firm closure without any bulk on the outside of the waistband. You could also, if you wanted to, you could lap your, um, waistband this way and do a buttonhole here and then a button here so you'd have a little button. Um, or you can also do it that way too, and have a button off to the side a little bit. Um, but we're gonna do a hookah night closure. That way, you don't have to mess with any buttonholes, and it'll look really fresh and clean on the outside of your skirt. So I have my thread once again and I have, but some not Senate. There we go. And I'm going to start with the, um, hook part of my hook, and I You also see that I've just really quickly slips such close the edge of my waistband . Same thing we did over here at the top, sitting. I just slips, touched it really, really quickly. So I'm gonna put my hook and eye right in the center of my waist and and Well, first, I'm gonna put my needle through the middle just so we're kind of losing that, not underneath our hook. And I come back. So the, um, flat part of the hook and I you want to be facing towards edge of the waistband so they'll hook together. That's important. And then we're just going Teoh, since do a couple of stitches through the end of your waistband and through the holes on your hook, and I your hook and I might look different than mine. That's OK. It's just whatever you're most comfortable with. But I bought these in a big package, came with silver ones and, like black ones and white ones. I think, um, and it was like $5 for a whole pack of maybe 20 sets. So it's not any more expensive than a button, but I think it makes the skirt look a little bit Niedere. Of course, if you do have, like a great statement button or something that coordinates with your skirt, you can use that. So I've done here is I just put the thread through the bottom of the bracket or of the, um, hook to the other side. I'm just going to go up the other side, make sure it's straight, and then once again, just do a few stitches through each one. And then mine has this third attachment point as well, which they don't all have. But this one does. So I'm sticking my needle through over here That's coming up over by the third attachment point this will give. You are really sturdy closure. You'll notice that when I'm stitching, I'm not poking my needle all the way through to the right side of the garment. I'm just kind of catching the inside of the waistband, so if I turn it over, you don't see any stitches on that side. That's looking good. I'm gonna loot my fabric around my needle off a couple times this high kind of, ah, without cheater, kind of not. Our hook is attached. It's nice and firm, and now we'll want to step it up, and I find it helpful to mark where the edge of my hook is. You probably can't see this covers too little mark where the edge in my hook is with a pen . So that's where the hook lines up. That's where where will want the side of our I to be so and then start in the middle again just so he can haidar teal and then place my hook. I mean my bar right up against my pen and start attaching that. Still, it touches us in the same way that we attached hook Part of this. It's very simple, and it gives a really good effect. This is the last thing that we need to dio before our skirt is complete. Okay? Not a slip my throat around my needle. Make a little Not. And then I like to just put my needle. You'll see it on the inside. Hi. My needle through a little bit and snippet. That way you don't end up with, um, more extra thread hanging out. Then you need All right, So when are hook and eyes go together? It looks just like that Beautiful 10. And You're Done!: So here's your completed skirt. It will go with anything. Heels blast. You can really imagine this one. Maybe with crisp white button down. I'm wearing mine with this cool, semi sheer faux crop top for kind of a modern vintage look. And I'm wearing low heels, but you can also imagine. As I said earlier, if you made a floor length version out of size like Staten, you could really take this to a gala or fancy night out. If you make it shorter, you can really take it out to party. You can wear it anywhere, so I hope that you're pleased with your completed skirt. And I'd love to see your completed projects down in the projects tab down below. Please do share on Instagram I'm at Hello Ali J A L I E j. And if you use the hashtag Ali J and then X skill share, I'll be sure to find it. And I'd really love to see your skirt. So thank you so much