Sewing with Velvet Session 7: Constructing Your Circle Skirt

So we've got our full open pattern to cut out. And our fabric laid out in one layer with the wrong side up, using pattern weights to hold down the fabric. And you would use your rotary cutter ideally. My cutting mat underneath is a little too small for my big open pattern. So I'm gonna use scissors. We're just going to cut our pattern out. And as you cut the pile that you are kind of trimming as you're cutting, the piles are gonna go everywhere. So it may be a good idea to have a vacuum cleaner handy to get some of those hairs that are gonna go everywhere. Now I am using a velure, which is a knit napped fabric. So it has stretch. And this velure is from fashionfabricsclub.com, which is an online retailer of a lot of different kinds of fabric. They have a lot of great velvet varieties. This red velvet and this burnout velvet is from them as well which I love. Those are beautiful velvets. When you're rotary cutting, you wanna make sure you're always cutting away from your body. That's how I got this little nick on my finger actually. I was breaking the rules in rotary cutting very badly. And those blades are sharp. You don't realize it until they get you. That's some awkward angles going on here. There we go. So since I'm using a velure which has a knit, I have a ballpoint needle on my machine and I have an all-purpose thread, which when you're sewing anything with stretch, an all purpose thread is a good option. You just don't wanna use a 100% cotton thread because it has no give, no stretch at all to stretch with your seams. So all purpose thread is a cotton wrapped polyester core thread, which means it's got a little more give to it. All right. So we've got our fabric cut out. And our first seam is going to be our back seam center back. So aligning our cut edges, I'm going to use half inch seam allowances to stitch. And this seam since it doesn't require any stretch to it, it's not stretching around the body at all, I'm just going to use a straight stitch. And I have a roller foot on my machine which is going to be very helpful and important in feeding both layers of my fabric through at the same rate, since having a napped fabric and having a knit means it's prone to even more stretching and shifting than just a regular velvet fabric. And I'm going to begin a couple of stitches away from the raw edge to avoid getting my fabric jammed down into my throw plate. We're gonna backstitch to the beginning. And that roller foot does a nice job of helping the upper layer of fabric feed through. And I cut my pattern so that the center front was running in the length, running along the length of this where the stretch was on my fabric. So this back seam doesn't have any stretch to it. So that is helpful in minimizing shifting as well. So I got a little bit of shifting and creeping on that layer. Backstitch at the end. So the end of my seam, it's a little bit off. And may have been a cutting error since I was cutting in kind of a weird situation. So for our waistband, I've got my waistband cut three and a half inches wide by the waist measurement and cut so that the direction of the stretch is running lengthwise since this is going to have to stretch around the body. I'm going to do this right sides together. And we're going to stitch this short seam. We're going to stitch only about an inch on this side and an inch on this side. So we're leaving the space right in the middle and that'll be for threading our elastic through our waistband. I'm using a half inch seam allowance. I'm going to start a couple stitches away from the raw edge. A backstitch and then leave a little space and stitch the rest of the seam. All right. Then for our waistband, so we would press that seam or steam the seam open rather. There's that opening for our elastic. And we're going to fold this in half with wrong sides together. And you can steam that center crease if you would like. I'm gonna use some pins here. And then I'm actually going to baste these layers together. Since when we put this on our skirts, we're going to have three layers of velure to stitch through. So just to make sure all of my layers stay even, I'm going to hand baste these together right now. So I'm just going to use a double layer thread at about a quarter inch seam allowance since I'm going to use a half inch to stitch this. All right. And then when we get our waistband, so we are going to want to quarter mark our waistband and our skirt waistline first so that we have some more points to match up when we're attaching our waistband to our skirt. So I'm gonna fold the waistband in half with the center back seam at one fold. And I'm going to place a pin in the other fold. And I'm gonna open that up and align the fold with the pin I just put in And place a pin in the fold on either side. And we're gonna do the same thing to the skirt upper edge. So folding this, the center back seam at one end. Place a pin in our center front, and then fold in half. Match the center front and center back to find the sides. And then we've got some points to match. So we're going to take our skirt with the right side out. We're going to place our waistband over the skirt. Right sides together. I'm going to match our points. So matching the center front. If you find that your velvet nap is getting kind of bulky here, since we have three layers of seam allowances and three layers of fabric, you may need to trim out some of that bulk out of the seam allowances. And then we can place a couple of pins in between all of our matching points. And as we sew this seam, we're going to use a zigzag stitch. Since this seam is going to have to stretch around the body, we wanna make sure it's got stretch in it. So we don't wanna use a regular straight stitch. We're gonna use zigzag stitch or another stretch stitch such as a triple stretch stitch. Start somewhere near the back. It's generally a good spot to start. I'm using my half inch seam allowances. My roller foot helps roll everything along. Remove pins as you come to them of course. So we're going slow, taking frequent breaks to make sure everything is still aligned. It's good to learn how to sew on this velure or a stretch velvet variety, since it seems like there are a lot of them in stores today. So right up to the place where you started, you don't have to leave an opening since we already left our opening in the waistband. Let's backstitch. So here's our waistband and you wanna press your seam allowances downward. So press those down. And to insert our elastic, I've got one inch wide elastic. It's woven elastic. It's a nice stiff variety. It's not going to do a lot of rolling and twisting in your casing. So as far as the cut length of your elastic, it's up to personal preference really. I cut mine to the waist measurement that I'm using here so that when I lap the ends one inch over to secure that elastic, I'm going to be getting one inch of negative ease around my waistband. Some people like to subtract one inch from the waist measurement when they're cutting the elastic so that when they lap the ends over there at two inches of negative ease. It all depends on personal preference, how tight you want the elastic around your waist. If you're using a really heavyweight fabric, you're going to want more negative ease to make sure that holds tight around your body so that the heavy fabric isn't pulling your garment down. So I have got a safety pin in one end of my elastic. And this opening that we left in our waistband, hopefully it will be large enough to get our elastic through. If not, you may need to open it up a little bit more. But we're just going to be threading this elastic through just as you would in every other casing you've ever done. And I have got about an extra quarter inch in my waistband so that I'm not trying to thread a one inch wide elastic through a one inch wide casing. That it's not fun. So that's why we cut our waistband at three and a half inches wide so that we would have some room to thread this through. And threading this through, making sure that the elastic doesn't get twisted as we're threading it. Make sure you don't lose this end in the casing as you're threading it through either. All right. Remove your safety pin. We're just going to take these elastic ends. We're going to lap one over the other by about one inch. And we can use a regular straight stitch to stitch these together. Since the elastic has a lot of stretch in all the other areas of it, we don't need to have stretch in the seam. It's kinda tricky. We're working with a very small bit of elastic here. There we go. And I'm just going to stitch a box along these lapped ends. Lifting my presser foot and pivoting. I went a couple too far. You don't have to use your roller foot for this. You could use your standard foot, but I just had it on there. So I'm going to get this elastic back in the casing. And then take a hand sewing needle and thread to stitch this opening. So making sure the seam allowances are folded under. Everything is lying flat. Nothing is twisted in the casing. I'm gonna start in here and just slip stitch that opening closed. All right, it's slip stitch the whole thing. But let's look at next step which is the hem. So this is already, I guess, practically done. It's so quick and easy. So to hem this, look how nice that drapes. I just love this project. So the hem since we're hemming this is a half circle skirt, so the cut edge has a much wider circumference than the circumference one inch up from the cut edge, which is where we're going to be folding cut edge up to. So the most efficient way of doing this I have found is to run a line of basting stitches with your machine about a quarter inch up from the cut edge. And that's going to help ease in that extra, all that extra length from the cut edge. So you're basting stitch is the longest length straight stitch you've got. And the simple act of basting this edge is going to pull it up some. It might even pull it up too much and I may have to let out some of that ease. But if you were stitching up full circle skirt, the simple act of basting may not be enough to ease in all that extra fullness. Yeah, that's gonna be too much ease for me, but I'll let some of that out. So run a line along the whole cut edge. Let out some of the ease if you need to. And then we're just going to be turning this up one inch and that eases that extra length into a smaller area. So use your hem gauge to check your hem and take it over to your ironing board and steam that. Place some pins along your edge. Do that all the way around. I would have to let out a lot of ease. Boy, that really gathered that up. Finally we jump to this one, which is half completed which I ran my line of basting stitches using a quarter inch seam allowance along my cut edge, turned this up one inch all the way around. Place some pins in there. Give it a good steam at this fold to get a nice crease there. And then just as I talked about in my hem tips, take a hand sewing needle and thread and you can either catch stitch this. You can blind stitch by hand or by machine, but on this fabric, I tried doing a blind hem stitch by machine. And I tried for this little section right here and it didn't turn out really as invisible as I wanted. So I switched to a hand sewing needle and thread, which will take longer. Yes, but it will drape nicer and be more invisible on the right side. And it's just worth it. So I did my catch stitching all along the rest of my edge. And since this is a knit fabric, we don't necessarily need to finish the raw edge since knits aren't going to ravel the way wovens would. So catch stitch your edge, and on the right side, give it a good steam. And those little ticks of hand stitching are practically invisible on the right side. So here's the finished skirt. There's just nothing better than a nice drapey soft velvet skirt. So my daughter is going to love this. I hope you love your skirt. And I hope you love working with velvet in the future.