I love the comfort of a fild-over waistband. It’s fit is so forgiving on those days and it’s nice and wide so I don’t have that pinching feeling that I sometimes get from elastic waistbands. I’ve also been on a skirt kick lately because summer is fast approaching and I just don’t look that great in a pair of shorts. So what could be better than to put the two together. This tutorial is pretty general so that you can adjust it to whatever size you may be.

Materials:
Cotton print (I used a yard of 44″ wide quilting fabric and I’m a size medium)
medium weight cotton knit (I used a half yard)

1) square your fabric and then fold it from selvage to selvage (this folded edge will be called fold 1). Fold it again from raw edge to raw edge (the folded edge from this will be called fold 2). Measure your waist at the widest part and add 7-10 inches to that number. Take your new number and divide it by 4. My original measurement with 10″ added was 48″. Divided by 4 turns into 12″. Measure your final number from fold 2 (right side of the picture) along fold 1 (bottom of the picture) and mark.

2) Take the fabric from after your mark in step 1 and fold it into a triangle whos longest side runs from your mark in step 1 (left side of the picture) to the corner of the raw edge (right side of the picture).

3) Cut along the longest side of the triangle you made is step 2.

4) Open up fold 2 and cut along fold 1. The two pieces you are making are the front and back of the skirt. The shorter edges are the waist and the longer bottom is the bottom hem edge.

5) take the two pieces, place them with tops and bottoms matching and right sides facing each other. On each side, seam, zigzag stitch the edges and press.

**note: after step 5 I gathered the top. In hind sight I reaize that this is really an extraneous step so I’ve excluded it but you will see that in the next pictures, the cotton print is gathered.**

6) take the measurement for your hips and subtract at least 2 inches from that. I think I subtracted more like 5″ or 10″. The joy of knit fabric is it has a lot of give and as the day goes on, it stretches out even more. Seam the sides, press open and fold the whole thing in half, raw edge to raw edge. Mark where the middle front is and the middle sides are on the waistband.

7) Turn your skirt right side out and mark the middle front and middle back (you can choose which side is which because at this point it doesn’t really matter). Align the waistband raw edges up and place the skirt inside the waistband. Start matching and pinning fronts, backs, and sides of the skirt and waistband.

Pin the waistband to the skirt, distributing the extra fabric of the skirt between the pins.

9) Sew the waistband to the skirt, stretching the wasitband as you stitch from pin to pin.

10) trim down the cotton print edge of the waistband seam and then zig-zag stitch that edge to the knit fabric. Use a slightly higher number of stitches per inch than you would normally to not limit the stretch in the waistband.

11) Hem as you please and press. I zig-zagged the raw edge and the used two lines of stitching to hem. My reasoning: so I didn’t have to shorten the skirt by too much, so the hem is light, and so it doesn’t flip up on me. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

12) Put on, fold down, and enjoy.

1. Karina Says:
   June 2nd, 2010 at 2:20 pm

   Lovely Skirt! Great tutorial!! I wish that I wasn’t such a beginner when it comes to sewing… Hopefully When I get better at figuring out my sewing machine I can make this !