There are only two more Sew For Me posts! I have LOVED this series and working with the wonderful girls over at KOJO Designs!
Today I am going to revisit one of my most popular tutorials. The Taking Notes Skirt.
For some reason when I switched over to the new blog it didn’t bring ALL of the posts (grrrrrrrr). But this was a good excuse to repost it with some upgrades if you will. So here we go with Taking Notes Skirt 2
I hope I answer some of the many email questions I have recieved about this skirt
I promise it is super easy! I absolutely love rugby stripe fabric but have an incredibly hard time finding it in cute colors. I finally decided just to make my own. The fabric pictured above is just wide strips of quilters cotton Orange and Ice Blue Sewn together. I wish I had made the ties as wide as the original. I think with a waist this significant you need nice chunky ties, no?
What you will need:
1.5 yards of fabric (unless you want a rugby strip like mine then you need 3/4 of each to create the main, wasitband and ties)
1/2 yard light interfacing
a small amount of thin elastic
a zipper
2 buttons
The new and totally improved Momma sized pattern can be found
HERE, the daughter’s can be found
HERE.Once you have printed our the pattern, cut two from your fabric and 1 from the interfacing. Then cut out your ties. To make the ties you will need 4 long strips of fabric the same width and length. Create your ties by placing two lengths of fabric right side together and sewing all the way around, leaving one end open. Then, pull the fabric right side out. I then iron and top stitch but that is up to you.
I wanted my ties wide and long so I needed to gather the ends so that it would match up with the end of the top of my skirt.
Take one of the fabric pieces you cut out from the pattern and the one piece of interfacing. Attach the interfacing to the wrong side of the fabric following the interfacing instructions. While you are at your iron, iron up the unfinished bottom of both the skirt top pieces. This will give you a nice finished edge on the bottom. Once you are done lay both your top pieces together, right sides touching
Now take the two ties you made and slip them in between the two piece of fabric at either end, open edge peaking out the end just for safe sewing
At this point you should also cut two little lengths of thin elastic, to create button loops. I put one above the tie on the right side and below the tie on the left side. I felt like this gave the most support.
Once you have them positioned correctly you are going to start sewing. Sew all the way up and over finishing at the opposite edge.
When the whole process is done you should be left with something resembling this:
Now for the skirt portion. I wanted mine to hit right above my knee and be moderately gathered. I made two pieces and sewed them together simply because of the amount of fabric I had. If you only want one seam you can totally use one long piece of fabric. Either way, place your fabric right sides together and sew up the seams. If you have only one seam put in the zipper now. If you have two seams I actually suggest making these be on either side and cutting a line down the center of the back to insert the zipper. If you have two seams and try to put the zipper in one of the seams you will end up with a side zipper (which won’t work) or have a seam right down the middle of the front of your skirt (yuk!)
Now run a gathering stitch along the top. I then lined my skirt up with the top to adjust the gathering until it matched.
Then I turned the skirt bottom right side out and slid it up into the pocket we created earlier and pinned it all the way around
Now you are going to topstitch all the way around until the end. When you are done attache two buttons opposite your little loops of elastic
Now all you have left is to topstitch over and across the top of the skirt. This is optional but I really think it makes it look nice. That is it!
It has been requested that I show a few more finished product pictures so here you go:
the tie and skirt top
the entire skirt a little closer
The only difference between mine and Evie’s was that I did NOT use interfacing on hers. I did on a second one I made her and I think it looked a little “crisper” if you know what I mean?
and this little lady is BUSY, she has lots of calls to make and friends to keep up with
I also made her a little hair clippy out of the scraps and the phone distracted her enough to leave it in for a bit!
Enjoy, and I hope you took notes haaa haa! I am so lame!
Cheers!
Kelly
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