I determined that just starting a new thread for this would be a good idea, as it Is a different skirt. same style, however. Alright, for this skirt you're going to need:
-a pillowcase (duh). if your pillowcase, like mine, does not have a seperate solid colored band around the top, you'll either end up having your godets be the same pattern as the rest of your skirt or you will have to find some random fabric to use for them. i just happened to have some painfully bright yellow canvas stuff lying around.
-thread in a color that goes with your pillowcase and will stand out well against it
-a zipper. 7" or so is fine. non separating, of course.
you'll also need an iron and a decent sewing machine, but i assume you have those if you're even going to attempt this.
first of all, cut open all the seams
then cut your rectangle of fabric along the bias in a few places
so you can piece it back together into a rectangle that's all on the bias.
once you have it all laid out, right side up, pin the pieces right sides together, making sure to pin and sew the longest seams completely before doing the shorter ones.
sew all the pieces together with a 1/4" seam allowance (which you probably can't quite make out in my crappily lit and too close up picture)
press all the seams flat, but not open. both layers of seam allowance have to stay to one side of the seam. bust out the overedging foot for your sewing machine, crank up the stitch width to 6.5 and lower the stitch length to 1-ish, and proceed to do a zigzag stitch on the front (good) side of your fabric with the guide of the overedging foot resting right in the seam and the seam allowance over to the left side.
Once you've done that to all your tiny seams they should look much like this:
there's undoubtedly a way to do that with a serger too, but as i don't have a serger.....
anyway, now it's pattern-making time. your first pattern piece will look something like this:
but longer. A (the top line) is your waist measurement (or wherever on your hips you want this to sit) divided by 6. keep in mind that this skirt will be a bit stretchy, so you'll probably want to subtract an inch or two from your waist measurement before dividing it just to make sure it fits better.
B is the measurement of the widest part of your hips (subtract 1/2" to 1" if you want it to be more fitted) divided by 6. make sure to draw B parallel to A as many inches down as it is from your waist (ish) to your wide hip on your body. i hope that made sense.
C is the finished length of your skirt+1" for waistband and 1/2" or 1" for the hem. So for a skirt that ends up 17" long you'd need to make C 18.5" or 19", depending on how good you are with doing narrow hems. keep in mind that you can't make C much longer than 19" or you won't have enough fabric to cut out your pieces.
1/2" seam allowances on the sides and you're good to go.
your second pattern piece is much easier:
A is how wide you want your godets. the wider you make A, the swishier your skirt will be around the hem.
B is how tall you want your godets. this can be anywhere from a couple of inches to the width of your solid pillowcase band. mine were something like 7".
add 1/2" seam allowances again and snip the top of your suddenly very tall and pointy triangle down to 1/2" above the top of B.
now you have pieces! cut out 6 of each.
figure out what order you want your main pieces to be in
pin all your nonsense together
i found it easiest to pin all the main panels together about halfway, then pin the godets into place. remember to leave one seam open for your zipper.
sew things together with a 1/2" seam allowance for the next 20 minutes. godets are easiest if you do them first, IMHO.
press your godet seams flat so the seam allowances aren't under the godets and do that thing with the overedge foot again
so when they're all done they can look rad like this:
baste your open side seam shut and install your zipper in the centered way (there's a really good tutorial for this somewhere around here. the link to it is in the sewalong thread.)
now you should be at about this point:
alright, so the way i finished the vine skirt from here was to just press all the unzigzagged seams open and do a rolled hem and waistband and then handsew a hook&eye closure right above the zipper, HOWEVER i don't like to repeat my projects unless it's by commission and i miscalculated my measurements on my main pattern piece, so this skirt is going to have a waistband. THEN i will roll the hem and the top edge of the waistband and sew in a hook&eye closure.
WOW THAT WAS RATHER RUNONISH
NOTE- you may have noticed that the vine skirt is a bit more fitted. for the sake of making this tutorial accessible to those who don't happen to have double-darted basic skirt blocks lying around, the main pattern piece shape is not extremely contoured. if you're interested in making a more fitted version of this skirt, let me know and i'll post some more instructions.
~~EDIT~~ I ended up attaching a waistband (which was too small and was given little inset bits of the flower fabric to correct my problems with measurements), installing The Sexiest Zipper i have ever installed, and sewing little yellow bows to the top of each godet. It fits me so very well that I am quite sad about it being yellow. Yellow, sadly, is another one of those colors that I can't wear.
VOILA!!! SUNNYSKIRT IS BORN!!!
~~SOLD~~
