How to make a simple skirt

I am pleased to announce that today I tackled making a skirt and it was a great success! I had looked at quite a few tutorials so knew roughly what I was planning, but I used mainly this one over at Dana Made it.

The skirt took about 2 1/2 hours to make and I was able to do it using some leftover fabric I had.

You will need:

- Fabric - I used a cotton, but this depends on how you want your skirt to fall. I'd recommend feeling up a lot of fabric in a fabric shop and seeing how it feels. 

- Elastic - I used a 2 inch width elastic. 1 inch would also work fine. 

Measuring Up 

Elastic

First of all measure your waist (or where you want the skirt to sit). For example I wanted mine to sit a little bit lower than my waist and this measured 28inches. Add an inch to this and cut your elastic. So mine was 29 inches. 

Fabric

Length - Measure from your waist to where you want your skirt to finish. E.g. just below the knee. Then 1.5inches to this (for the hem). Mine came to 22.5inches. 

Width - Take your waist measurement and double it. So mine came to 56 inches. 

Therefore I needed a piece of fabric that measures 56 inches by 22.5 inches. It doesn't matter if you don't have one large piece however, as you could always just sew two pieces to together. 

 Step 1

Place the right sides of the fabric together, pin and sew the seam of the side of the skirt. I did this by straight stitching first and then using a zig zag stitch over the top of it to reinforce it. 

Step 2

Iron your seam! I stupidly didn't leave much seam allowance so unfortunately mine looked a bit dodgy!

Step 3

Fold over the raw edges (about 1/4 of an inch) of both the top and bottom of your skirt and iron flat. 

Step 4

To create the waistband, fold over the top of the fabric and iron flat. This should be about 1/2 inch wider than the elastic itself. 

Step 5

Next, at the seam, add two pins about 4 inches apart. This will be where you feed through your elastic waistband. 

Step 6

Sew the waistband in place (just the fabric at this point, the elastic comes in next). Remember to leave that gap in between your pins. 

Step 7

Put a safety pin on one end of the fabric and feed it through the waistband. You'll notice the fabric starts to gather. 

Step 8

You now need to sew the elastic together. This is also a good time to check the skirt fits! Safety pin both pieces of elastic together and try the skirt on. You can then get a good idea of where you want to sew the elastic together. 

To sew the elastic together, simply pin it in place. Again I just used straight stitch and then reinforced it with a zig zag stitch in two places. Cut off any excess elastic. 

Step 9

Straight stitch the gap in your waistband

Step 10

Finally to create the hem at the bottom of the skirt simply, fold over about 1/2 inch of fabric (depending on how wide you want your hem to be), iron flat and straight stitch along. 

Step 11

Iron out any creases and you are done!

For a first attempt I was really pleased with this skirt. It's probably unlikely to be worn by me as it's quite a poofy skirt. This is due to a few factors; my choice of fabric, and the thick elasticated waist band. Next time I'll be trying the same design but with a polyester fabric to see how that works out. Let me know if you try it, as I'd love to see your results too!