Knit Skirt with a Fold-over Waistband

A knit skirt tutorial! Making this skirt took me about an hour because I was lucky enough to not have to rip any seams out!

I went to Hancocks again this week, and got a lovely solid purple knit, an interesting black burn-out print knit, and a fun ballet-pink 3D flowery remnant. I'm using the solid purple to make this tutorial. I bought 2 yards, but you'd probably be able to use only a yard and a half for this project, depending on how long your legs are... and I'm assuming that no one has legs that are 5 feet long. That would be terrifying.
                                    
First! Measure yourself!
You'll need three measurements:
1. Measure around the widest part of your waist.  For me, it's my hips. For others, it might be your booty. Divide this number in half. Is is your waist measurement.
2. Take the waist measurement, and subtract three or four inches. This will be your waistband measurement. (you can also just pull the waistband tight around you once you've sewed it, and cut it then. I'll get to that part later)
3. Waist to floor.  When cutting, you might want to add a few inches so that you don't come up short.
                                                       


Second! This may be the most crucial step... clear off your workspace. You are looking at my end-of-the-week table. It is covered in shopping, mail and home school stuff.

 Third! Lay out your fabric, measure and cut. Keep your fabric folded in half, smooth out the wrinkles as best you can. Don't forget that the waist measurement is actually half of what you actually measured, since the fabric is cut while it's folded in half!  You will end up with two rectangles.  

 Fourth! Sew up the long side of your skirt piece. Make sure you're sewing right sides together! If you don't have a serger, use the zigzag stitch on your sewing machine.  That stitch lets the knit stretch without breaking your seam thread.

Fifth! The waistband.
Use the two long skinny rectangles that you cut off when you cut your skirt out. Line up the edges that you DIDN'T cut- the factory edges.  They may be wrinkly and hard to work with, but that'll give you the best edge. My serger cut off the edges, but if you are using a sewing machine, trim off the troublesome edges after you've sewn your seam.

Once you've done the long seam, you will probably notice that the other side is not even! That's ok, there is an easy solution!

 Fold your waistband over on itself, lining up the nice, straight edge that you just made.

 Decide how wide you want your waistband, and trim the wonky edgeedge.  Mine is about 5 inches wide.

 Now is where you can measure (or re-measure) your waist. Take the band, and wrap it around your waist. You want it to be really snug! If you need to, mark and trim off excess fabric.

Once you've done that, open the waistband out, and sew the shorter edges together, so that you have a circle of fabric.

 This is what the waistband should look like on the inside after you've joined the edges.

It is very important to make sure your adorable, sweet, lovely children come and ask you lots of unnecessary questions, and interrupt you as much as possible.

 Turn the seams to the inside, and press the top of the waistband.  Ironing knits is a pain, but this will really help.

 So now you have a skirt and a waistband! Notice that the skirt is wider than the waistband.

 Fifth! Measuring and marking in preparation for sewing the two pieces together.
Lay out the waistband, with the seam facing away from you, and place a pin in the two opposite corners. Can you see them? They're yellow.

 Adjust the waistband, so that the pins are on top of each other, and place two more pins in the new opposite corners. (A note: knits like to roll on the edge, so you'll be constantly trying to unroll them and smooth out the fabric.  It's obnoxious, but worth taking your time on this part!)

 Then, line up those pins and place even more pins in the new corners. Eventually, you want it to look like this, with eight pins...

 Do the same marking on your skirt piece.  Only this time, you can use a sharpie to make very small dots at the very top of the fabric. If the thought of Sharpie and your pristine fabric makes you nervous, go ahead and use pins!

 Once you have pinned and marked both pieces of your skirt, slip the waistband inside of the skirt, then line up the dots and pins.  Pin each dot to its corresponding pin on the waistband.  Don't try to smooth everything out! The skirt is wider than the waistband, and you only want to make sure that your measured points are matching.

 Sixth! Sew everything together!
Since the skirt is wider than the waistband, when you put it into the machine, it will look like this- all wrinkly and uneven looking.

 As you sew, grab the next anchor point and gently tug at it, until the fabric is laying flat. Sew, still holding onto the gently stretched fabric, until you're ready to take out that anchor pin and grab the next one.  DON'T FORGET- take out your pins! Learn from my mistakes!!

Seventh! Turn your skirt the right way out and put that thing on! You'll probably have to trim a few inches off the bottom... as I obviously need to do.

Enjoy! Seriously, this is the easiest, comfiest pattern ever! I now have three of them, and I love them! They're as comfy as my yoga pants, but more stylish. So I feel a little more put together on days when I would seriously rather be wearing yoga pants in public. And by public, I mean the library.

Knit Skirts are My Favorite

Seriously. Next to yoga pants, knit skirts are the best.

I've been looking for some cute knit fabric, and I found some this week! If you've been interested in my fabric woes (first world problems, I know!), I made another disapointing and fruitless trip to Joannes recently.  But last week, I was finally over by Hancocks and had time to pop in.  Mara has dance class on the other side of the building- how convenient is that? I found some cute fabrics, and all of them were on sale! I've also started searching Etsy for fabrics, and my cousin has given me an excellent on-line source for cottons, also!

 The color on the chevron fabric is atrocious! It's more of a pinky red. The Disney princess fabric is to become comfy pants for Mara.  She's insisting on having a shirt also.  We'll see how that goes.

True confessions... this...

 ... is how I do patterns these days.  It's easier to draw around the pattern and then cut it out, than to pin the pattern and then cut it out or cut with a rotary cutter.  I even found some things to work as pattern weights. I love it!  I haven't ruined anything yet, but I'm sure that when I do, it will be tragic. Until then, I'm reckless with the sharpie.

And these are the skirts I made! I am definitely going to need to work on my mirror-full-body-selfie taking skills.

Love this one! Pic taken before hemming, which wasn't really hemming so much as it was slicing several inches off the bottom.  Yay for hem-less knits!

*sigh* The green one came out weird.  Kind of puckery because I stretched the knits wrong, and a little too short for my taste.  I'm going to try to fix it. I love the fabric! This is the pattern of the super-cute skirt I made a few weeks ago.  I gave it to an out-of-town friend, though, because she loved it and looked awesome in it!

I Fixed It!

And I am very proud of myself!

I fixed my serger!!

First, I had to order a new knife.  What a bummer- they are stinkin' expensive! I finally eBay-ed a set of knifes, for about $25 shipped.  Not bad, when I was looking at some going for $50 for just the upper knife!

I just got all of my tools together, found the right page in the owner's manual and did it! It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be.  I did have to re-thread the machine, and fiddle with the tension settings, but the knifes work beautifully!

It's hard to see, but there was an angle difference between the old and new lower knifes.  The old lower knife had an angle, and the new is flat.

Slight shape differences between old and new upper knifes.

 

Site of the serger surgery. Serious business.

All fixed!

Just to brag on my husband a little... he gives the best presents! This SD card and the staple gun he got me years ago are my favorites- he knows me so well!

Now that the serger is fixed, I've been sewing some knit skirts. Pics of those to come soon!

This is just a... Test

And brought it back to the nest singing microphone check

One two one two this is just a test

 

We got up this morning and walked. Now I'm trying out the blogger app. Plus coffee and a green smoothie. .. I like slow Monday mornings. 

... Except now I have Beastie Boys in my head. Could be worse!