TUTORIAL!!
Hopefully this makes some sort of sense!
MATERIALS:
Cotton Jersey Knit f/ waistband (you may be able to recycle a t-shirt),
Cotton weave of sometype for the bottom part (could be a lightweight suiting, novelty print, etc. or maybe you could recycle a bed sheet if not too thin or a curtains if not too thick),
Lightweight Fusible Interfacing for buttons area,
Some buttons,
Double Fold Bias Tape for the hem.
Ok, so you need you need two measurements. If you look at pieces 1, 2, and 3, these are all for the wasteband and are cut out of cotton knit. pieces 2 and 3 can be accomplished by cutting two #1 pieces at the same time, and then just cutting one of those in half. Anyhow, you are going to cut an hourglass type shape, which will eventually be folded in half when sewn. Depending on how tall you are you may wish to have your wast band a different length. The one I made was about 8" long i believe. So if you want it like the one I made, piece one will be 16" tall. Measurement A = hip divided by 2 , and Measurement B = Waistdivided by 2 minus 3". The cotton knit is stretchy so it will stretch to fit. You probably shall not need elastic to keep the skirt on.
SEW the indented ends of pieces 2 and 3 to the indented ends of piece 1.
Pieces 5 are light fusible interfacing. this is to make the 'placket' kind of like on a polo shirt, for where the buttons go. Its for stiffening up the placket it so it doesnt stretch funny and look weird when the skirt is worn. You need 2 pieces about 3/4"-1" wide and almost as long as you want your waste band to be, so we'll say in my example they are 7" long.
Iron one piece each, on the flat ends of of pieces 2 and 3 in the bottom corners, about 1/4" from the edges (seam allowance).
Fold the waste band inside out in half and
Sew the flat ends of 2 and 3. Turn it all back inside out and it should start looking quite nice!
Now to finish the placket. Overlap the ends of the waste band by ~1", basically overlapping the interfaced sections.
Baste the bottom of the waste band where the placket is, so a quick little 1" long stitching. Now create
Buttonholes on the front part of the placket, and attach your buttons to the inside part of the placket. Your on your own on that one.
WAISTBAND COMPLETE!
To finish the rest you need pieces 7 and 8. I used lightweight suiting, but you can use basically anything for this part. The long side is the full width of the fabric, say 45" or 54", what ever it comes in. The length... thats up to you. If you want a mini skirt, this may end up only being six or eight inches long, or maybe you want it down to the ankles and make it 30 inches long. In my example it was 18" long about. Anyways, refer to the bottom illustration to see how the bottom parts are folded. Your going to have to do some math here.
If your hips divided by 2 is say.... 20 inches (40 inch hip), then we need to fold each piece down to that width. actually, we want to ad a couple inches to that. when we attach it to the waistband the waist band can stretch, so we'll add a couple inches to this part for a more forgiving fit. otherwise if something goes a little two tight theres nothing you can do because the weave wont stretch like the knit part.
Anyhow, lets pretend we are using 45" wide fabric, and 40 inch hip.
40 inches divided by 2 = 20" plus we had 2" for safety
the illustration shows how i folded it. depending on how much or how little you need to fold it down too... you may get pleats that butt up against each other, or you may have 2" gaps between each pleat. Whatever you end up with is fine, as long as it end sup being the right width.
Pin pleats in place and
baste them.
You should now have two pleated pieces of the appropriate width.
Sew the ends of the two pieces together!
Next
Hem the bottom edge. You can hem normally, but in my case I decided to attach 1/4" double fold bias tape using a wide zigzag stitch, for contrast and it came out very very nice.
Bottom piece complete!
Sew the bottom to the waste band, button 'er up, and put it on!!
Ok, hope that explains it all well. I think depending on how fast or slow you work, you can amke this skirt in 1-3 hours. I think it took me about 2 hours but i cant remember.
So since I bothered to make this tutorial I EXPECT someone to make it, and I want to see it.
