Serger: Beyond the Basics Session 4: Project: Toddler’s Layered Skirt

And now it's time to put all of our learning together. We're going to do the little tiered toddler skirt here. And the first thing we need to do is figure out the sizes for each tier. So that's where we refer back to our ratios. And if you remember, we had our two different math formulas and we're going to be using this top one here, because I want my ruffles to be similar to the 20 to 15 ratio of 1.3. So when you go to make one of these skirts, you need two measurements. You need the waist measurement, and then you need the length of the skirt. And when I was over at my little granddaughter's house, who is about 20 months old, I forgot my tape measure. And I asked my son, "Do you have any string?" And he said, "Oh, sure, mom," and he went out and got it. He's a contractor, and he happened to have bright pink string. Now, I don't know if you've ever measured a toddler, but they don't like to stand still. And when you have a measuring tape, it's also very hard to read the numbers on a moving target. So the string worked out great. She thought it was so fun to look at, and was trying to figure out what it was. We just wrapped it around her baby waist, made a snip for the waist, and did one for the length. We were in and out in just a matter of minutes. And then I came home and I just laid it right on my ruler and found out that we have basically a 20 inch waist and a 10 inch length. So those are the measurements that I'm using. So maybe that trick will help some of you out there with squirmy children. All right, so since the waist is 20 inches, and I want to add 1 1/2 times of easement. So if you take 20 times 1.5, you'll come up with 30 inches. That is the piece for the waistband. And I'm going to go ahead and add two inches of extra insurance, because as you saw when we did the ruffles, sometimes the ruffles are a little bit to one side or other of the waistband or the flat piece. And I'd rather have a little bit of a fudge factor, and then we will come back and trim the entire skirt to this measurement. And you'll see how that works. So we're using 32 inches. And another reason that we use a little extra fabric, that extra two inches, is because depending on the weight of your fabric, remember that's gonna change the gathers, how dense they are, so that can also change your overall ratio. So again, give yourself a minimum of two inches. And if you wanna go a couple inches more, that's not gonna hurt anything. All right, again, my length is going to be 10 inches. I decided that I wanted to have three layers. And the interesting thing on this one is normally on the tiered skirts, what I'm seeing is popular, is each level, each tier is sewed to the next level. But that meant based on our formula, that my bottom tier was going to be somewhere around 54 inches of fabric. That's an awful lot of fabric on a two year old. They're just teeny tackers, still. So I came up with a modified plan, and what I did was I attached the first and second tier together. As you can see that's done. But the third one goes back and attaches to the first two. So the fabric amount for level two and level three are actually the same, because they all go in together. They just look like different layers. Now, if you wanted to make this a little bit more ruffly, you could probably add a couple more inches to it and then ease that in. But I think for what it is, it's just fine. And besides she's gonna outgrow it before I have time to worry about it. So using our formula, you'd have the first layer is 30 inches plus 2, was our 32. And then I take the 32 and I'm gonna multiply it by our formula of 1.3, and that gives me 41.6 inches for my fabric that's going to be gathered, which is what I'm calling the second layer. I went ahead and just rounded it up to the width of the fabric. Quilting fabric is typically 44 inches across. I figured if I have a little bit of extra fabric to play with, it's not that big a deal. It's faster to cut, and I'm just happy as can be going with the width of the fabric. Oh, and that layer, I decided I would cut at 4.5. These were just kind of arbitrary pleasing measurements to me, because I wanted it to look layered and for each layer to get successively bigger. And given that I only had 10 inches to play with, I found if I went with 3 inches for the top, and remember one inch is going to be turned under to make that faux casing, I went with 4 1/2 inches wide for the second one, and a 1/2 inch of that will be taken up with seam allowance. And then my last layer is the width of the fabric, but I went with 10 inches, because you're going to lose some for the seam. And then you're also going to lose approximately 2 inches for the hem. So by the time we get done, it's going to be right at that 10 inch level. So, let's get started and see how it comes out. As you can see this, one's already cut smaller. These are folded in half, so that's actually 32. This is 44. This is 44. I've gone ahead and turned under and pressed our fabric for our blind hem. That's the first thing I wanna do, because I don't wanna keep changing back and forth for my thread. So this is on a 2 thread narrow. It's already set up and we ... no, it is not. I need to put the right foot on. I forgot everything but the foot, so that would not have worked. So let's change out our foot. Okay. H is for hemming. So now I see that we are on the right foot. Make sure our foot is locked in place. Going to lift our fabric and put the edge of the guide on where I want to hem. Put my needle down. It's a little harder to see on this black. And of course, we're using black on black, which is always the worst to work with. Love black fabric, but it's hard to work with. And then we've got our knife set. so that it will trim. So here we go, and we are just going to Oops. And, you know, given that it's for a little girl's dress, I will be honest, and since I am having a hard time seeing on the black, I know that some of my stitches will probably be a little bit bigger than I would prefer. But you know what, when she's galloping across that playground, I'm not gonna be seeing those stitches and either is anybody else. So, sometimes you just go by what we used to call the galloping horse rule. When I'm looking at it this close, I see every error. When a garment is on and there's movement, you don't notice the errors near as much, unless they truly are glaring. If she was a little bit older, if this was a special occasion dress, I probably would be doing it by hand. Or I would really fuss until I got this perfectly correct. But, given that I'm making it in a class, we're just gonna hope it came out really good. All right. Now I don't think I really showed you the backside of the hem. But you can see where the edge is nicely finished. And when we get that pressed, it's gonna look really nice. So I tell you what, let me go over to the ironing board and press this and I'll be right back. All right, so we finished the hem, and you can see here where I've pressed it. And yeah, I've got a few little stitches showing, but black thread on black fabric, the one good thing, it's very forgiving. And just to show you the inside, there's that nice finished edge. And that's a very, very secure hem, no matter how hard she plays. So we're going to set that aside for the moment. The next thing I want to do, is I want to gather our eyelet, because we're going to be attaching that as part of the ruffles. So we're going to slip that under. As you remember, it gets gathered all by itself. So we're just are going to put that right underneath, and ruffle away. And you can do this moderately fast. You just don't wanna go pedal to the metal, because you need to give the fabric time to go through and let the ruffler actually do this sort of an action, where it's pulling the fabric into the thread. And I got off just a little bit there, so I clipped that end off. Now I'm going to be attaching this to the hem of level number two here. And this ruffle actually will be the hem for that level. Now we usually do a blind hem or a 2 to 3 inch hem in garment construction, because it gives weight or body to the garment, so it will hang nicely on the body. But given that this is for a child and there's not a lot of fabric involved, and also since this is just a decorative edge, it can substitute for the hem. Another thing you could do, if you didn't want to add lace or ruffle, is you could do a 2 thread rolled hem, just a little rolled edge of a thread. And that could be in matching or a contrasting color, that would look very nice. And you could probably even get away with it down here. And that would also add to the ruffly look. So a couple of options there that you can customize to make it your own. So this time when I put the, I have to think about this for a second, when I do this, I'm going to be ... I already ruffled that. I'm going to have this as my top edge, because it's the hem, and this will be my bottom edge, and I'm actually going to be ruffling it twice. So we'll see how that works. We're gonna try something different here. Let's get that in and make sure we anchor it. Now, when I did the ruffle this time, I did turn my stitch width down. This will be going in, and this time, because it will have fabric over the top and be part of the hem, I want to turn my stitch width back up. So I'm going back to a wider ruffle So now we'll see if ruffling on top of ruffling actually gives you more ruffles. And you're right, I wasn't thinking, I actually could have put the ruffle or the eyelet fabric on the bottom and ruffled it at the same time that I was attaching it. The reason I didn't was that I know for this layer, I want to have it plain. Or I wanted to have it already ruffled, so it would go in with a gather. And this layer, I'm just having to be a little more careful, because I don't want to pull out any of the ruffling that's already been done. All right. Well, I'm going to take it over and iron it in just a minute. But when we iron it, this will turn up so that the seam is facing upward, and that will give it a nice look. And you can see, that it actually did ruffle the eyelet a little bit more by going over it twice. And if you're worried about the hem coming loose, not loose so much, but unfolding, you can certainly come along with your sewing machine with a top stitch right along that edge, and that will secure it and you won't have that problem. In the meantime, I'm gonna go ahead and put the ruffle on here. We're gonna get this first layer done, so that I only have to make one trip to the ironing board. I like to work smarter, not harder, in case you haven't figured that out. So in this case, we're going to come in and anchor that down, this lace. I'm hoping I'm gonna have enough lace. You know what, when in doubt, use the model. We should. I measured it before, but like I told you, you never know. All right, so the lace goes in. It goes next to the top tier fabric, and it is going to go in right sides together. I'm gonna get that back as far as we can. And you always wanna double check that your presser foot is down, because if it isn't, the machine will sew, but you won't get a very good stitch. And you'll wonder, "Why is my stitch quality so poor? Is it my tension? Is it something wrong with the needles or the way it's threaded?" And actually it's just a matter of the presser foot is not engaged. So here we go. Oops. Okay. We're gonna be just about right for that eyelet. There's something about when it gets ruffled, it always just never looks like quite enough. And this may look a little bit slow out there in video land, but I'll tell you what, it's still faster than doing it on the machine, and going through several steps to attach everything. Leave that. All right, so now I'm going to go iron this, and I will be right back and we'll get ready to attach the next layer. All right. Here's our first two tiers. You can see that this was the hem that we put on. And then this was the ruffled eyelet with the ruffle attached to the top tier. Now, what we're gonna do is a little bit trickier. So we're gonna have to really pay attention. We're going to be attaching the bottom tier. So let's walk that into the serger, and get it in position with our stitch and push that down. Now where this one is going to hook into is going to be up here on this tier. So we are going to ... and we have to get this right here, because this is my hem. So if I attach it this way, here's what I'm trying to show you. If I attach it this way, there's where the ruffles going and there's the top level, the waistband. So that is totally backwards. So you have to think these things through, because with that knife cutting off the edge, you don't want to ruin your beautiful work. So it needs to go in this way, and you can see how it's lining up. And then this will turn back. So we will be feeding the top seam, which consists of two tiers and your eyelet. We're going to be feeding that in through our top portion of the ruffler or the gatherer. It's a good thing those terms are interchangeable. So I matched up now with the bottom. Now this one should go a little bit easier. We still need to be careful as we're putting it through, because you do have ruffles here and you don't want it to turn and get caught up into the serging. So you still gonna need to make sure it's feeding through nice and evenly, but it should be a little bit easier because you're only dealing with one layer as a whole unit, or the unit feels like one layer. So here we go. And it's always okay to stop and take your time. Make sure everything's just the way you want it to be before you go ripping through. Just keep telling yourself, "It's still faster than doing it on the machine, and you're getting a nice, finished edge, so you don't have to come back and use a different stitch or go over it with a zigzag." You're done. When you're done, you're done. And when it's turned inside out, it actually looks quite professional because of the serged edges. Now it does get a little bit bulky in here, but it's not as critical as if it was on oops, I'm gonna run out of ruffle here. It's not quite as critical as if it was up on the waistband. If you had three layers of fabric up around a waistband, that could be pretty uncomfortable. So now we've got our three layers, all serged together, and you can see how nice that looks underneath. And I can just picture a little toddler doing that number and having fun, swinging her skirt. So let me go give this a quick press and I'll be right back. Now, it's time to square up our ends and make sure that our layers are ready to sew together into a circle to make the final seam. In this case, the bottom ruffle actually came out shorter than the other two, which is a little unusual, but it's probably again because we had that extra three layers of fabric that we were connecting it to. Again, you never know how fabric is going to play out. So I'm very glad that we had that extra two inches for insurance. So I just kind of lined it up, so it looks relatively square. Believe me, on this kind of a skirt, you don't have to be super precise. I like to get it as square as they can though. So we're going to cut that. And now it's time to go ahead and join the ends. When you get ready to join the ends, oops, I need to square this a little bit better here. All right. That's better. All right, so now we're going to come along here, and you want to make sure that your seams are matching. And you can pin it, but you can't, because you're going to be taking the pins out as you go. Now, ideally you can go ahead and put your regular foot on. If you're lazy, like me, all you have to do is put your differential feed back down to neutral. Your stitch length and stitch width would all stay the same. And you can actually sew underneath that gathering foot, believe it or not, because without the differential feed you're just gonna be making a regular seam. What a concept. So let's just go ahead and seam, like we normally would. We wanna make sure that, oops and I didn't come off. That's the nice thing with a serger. You just kind of go off the edge. I want to make sure I've got a regular seam length here. So I'm gonna move that back down to a 2, and now we're ready to go And I checked to make sure everything's lined up the way I want it to be. Now in this case, the layers do sew together, right in here. You're going to, let me pull this back so you can see it. On the rear seam here, everything gets sewed into the seam, so it won't be free and loose like a traditional skirt would be. But again, for what it is, and for who's gonna be wearing it, it works just fine. And unless you're a true seamstress, most people aren't going to figure that out. You want to just double check that everything is lining up and matching. It looks to be. And then we go even with our other layer there. And then at the bottom, we wanna make sure that our hem is nice and even. Run it off. You can come back and put a dab of glue here or you can actually on your sewing machine, after you press your hem, just come in and run a little bar tack at the bottom. And then you won't have to worry about the threads coming undone, which is a good idea. Now, typically when I'm doing clothing construction, just like with quilting, I usually don't use white thread. I will usually use a gray, either a light for light fabrics, or a medium to dark gray for darker fabrics. It blends in wonderfully well. When the seams come a little bit apart, you don't see the little white dots. It just blends in. And that's what I usually keep on my serger. I switched to the white, because of the eyelet. So anyway, now we have our little skirt almost all together. It's just looking cute as a bug, if you'll pardon the pun. So I need to go once again, press another seam. I wanna press that back seam, and then I will show you the elastic. And I think you're gonna be surprised how fast this elastic is gonna go on. We're nearing the end. We're almost done. We're down to the last step, and that's the elastic. For the elastic, I have cut it to the waist measurement, which Taylor Rae's waist measure was 20 inches plus one inch for overlap. I can't make a round circle of elastic, unfortunately on the serger, so I did have to call in my sewing machine. So what I do is I just overlap the elastic and I want to set this up for an elastic stitch. And that's usually one, it looks like a zigzag but there's an intermediary stitch in between. So instead of going from the low point to the high point back to the low, it's going to take an extra stitch in there and that anchors it and helps it stretch with knits and with elastic. So I've put that on and added some width to it and some length, and let's see what we get here. And I also recommend putting down your, if you have it, needle down for your pivots. And this stitch came out a little bigger than I would like. So I think I'm going to bring it down just a little bit for the rest of this. And it doesn't have to be fancy. Nobody's ever gonna see it. The whole point is I just wanna anchor this elastic so that it won't come loose inside the faux casing. And just for good measure, we'll come back again, run it off, and that's close enough for what we're doing. And I will show you, if you have any doubts about your stitching, you just give it a good yank before we put it in the casing. So to do this casing, let me find my pins. They're hiding over here. We're going to divide our elastic in fourths. One there, one here, and one here, and one here. And I like the Clover head pins for this sort of work because I can really see them when I'm trying to line pins up. Okay, come over. We're gonna do the exact same thing on our little skirt. So I wanna make sure that, that center back seam is truly in the center. And guess what? It is. Yay. Put a pin there, put a pin right across from it. And then we're going to fold in half and get the other quarters. These would normally be side seams, if you had side seams. Just pull that out of the way a little bit. Now what we're gonna do, we're going to match up the quarters, and I like to put the back of the elastic in the back against the seam. You don't have to, but that's where I prefer to put it. So we're going to put it there, and we can come right around the skirt and pin those there. And what we're doing is evenly dividing the elastic around the edges of the skirt so that it won't be tighter in one spot than another. I'm putting it to the inside, which may seem counterintuitive, but as you watch and see what happens, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. So now we're going to go back to the serger, and then we'll be bringing the sewing machine back up for one more round. And this little contraption, if you don't have one, is a hole with a plastic bag in it that catches a lot of the little shavings from the serger. Very nice little attachment to have. I highly recommend it. All right. So we have our elastic all pinned in. And again, as I mentioned before, when it comes to serging, it is much better to take that extra minute and double check your work, and make sure you really are ready to serge, instead of just dashing madly ahead. In this case, I do wanna take off the gathering foot because the regular foot is a little bit narrower. And we're going to put that one back on. As you can see the difference there, that's quite a bit, and it will make a difference when I wanna see what I'm doing here. All right. Whatever you do, never ever ever ever never ever ever, and I can't say that strongly enough, never sew over a pin with a serger. Not only can you do extreme damage to the machine, you can cause injury to yourself. The most important thing is that you can damage the loopers and it is a very expensive fix. Do not run over pins. You always take them out before you come to them. And unfortunately, I pin them to the right like I'm used to. You really wanna pin them from the left, because it's much easier to grab them. So we have this set up. I want to put it on a smaller stitch length, so I have it on about a 2. I still wanna go wide for my width, so I catch a lot of the elastic. I want to make sure I don't have any differential feed on. I don't want to gather. And what I'm going to do is put my needles into the fabric. Oh, and one thing I almost forgot, most important of all, put your knife down. You want to lock the knife in the down position. And the reason for that is I do not want to cut my elastic. That would defeat the whole point of an elastic waistband if I cut the elastic. So with that all done, the needles are in a down position, and from there I take the first pin and I gently stretch it so the fabric and the elastic are flat. And then I go ahead and sew. And this part can go a little faster. Take the pin out before you come to it. Grab your next point, stretch it out so that it's nice and smooth. You get to the pin, take it out. Once again, one more pin. We're almost there. Take it out. And now I like to trim that thread before I get there. Stretch your final point and finish serging. Historically, you would make a casing. You would have to have to finish the first little 1/4 inch. You would have to turn it over. You would have to measure it. You would have to press it. You would have to stitch it. And then you would have to thread the elastic through, hope that you have the right measurement, anchor the elastic. And that's hoping that it doesn't break loose from the safety pin or whatever device you're pushing it through, and finally, you would have a casing. This is much easier. We are not going to leave it like this. It is going to get finished, and we're going to do that right now. We're going to bring up the sewing machine, threaded with the same color as your main fabric. And here's a little trick. If you have four seams, I only have two, but if you have four, what you're going to do is you turn the elastic over, so that the outer edge of the waistband is actually coming over and making a faux casing. You have a seam here on the side. We're going to stitch in the ditch, which means I am going to put my seam or my stitching right along that seam. All right? And it basically hides the stitching. And I like to go back over it, just to make sure it's nice and secure. Tie off the thread. Clip it. Now I'll have you take a look at that. I missed a little bit at the top, but you can see that it's basically right in the seam. And if you don't look too closely, or if I get it exactly right, you would never, ever, ever see that stitching. Come over here, and normally I would have another one that I could do it at, but I don't. So what I'm going to do, if you have four seams, you can actually do that stitch in the ditch trick, and you really don't have to do any more than that. It becomes a very no-notice casing, if you will. It lays smooth against the skin and that's what you would have. But since I don't have that luxury, what I'm going to do is come straight across and find that center point again, and just put a pin. And then let's go halfway again, as much as we can. And this just is approximate. It doesn't have to be totally perfect. I just wanna divide this somewhat evenly. The first part was more critical, where the elastic was being applied. All right. So now we've got something to grab onto. What you're going to do, I like to come to the front side, because in this case we can actually see and feel where the end of the elastic is. Come down here, using a straight stitch, go ahead and anchor your needle. And you're going to pull on the casing, and you can see how that's just rolling right over that elastic, right? Come along. Stitch. And this is anchoring the other side of your elastic. Notice, I'm not having to pull on this back side or very, very little. I'm just giving it a nice gentle pull. Put my needle down, and I do not like to sew over pins. People do it, but I'm telling you, you can throw the timing off and you can do some pretty bad damage to your machine. It's not just a matter of breaking a needle. You can do some pretty good damage. Ask me how I know. Now, we just keep coming around. And if your machine has some marks, you can line up a mark and then you're absolutely sure that you will be even, equal distance all the way around from the top edge. I just like to go ahead and backtrack a little bit. And guess what? We are done. And just that quickly, you've made as cute as can be a little skirt for a little girl, or if you've enlarged your pattern you've made a beautiful skirt for a beautiful young lady. So I hope you had fun. I hope you learned a lot. And more importantly, I hope that you will go out and apply what you've learned, and start having even more fun with your adventures in serging.