OPB Marie Sew Along: Week 3

I know everyone is excited about sewing this week, so let's get right to it!

What you'll need: both skirt pieces, both interfaced waistband pieces, straight pins, sewing tools, pressing tools.

A note on pressing (reposted from our Charlie Bag sew along)
In sewing, it’s important to distinguish between pressing and ironing. Ironing consists of using the iron in a smooth back-and-forth motion to remove wrinkles from your fabrics. When pressing, you place the iron straight down onto your fabric, leave it for a moment, then lift and repeat. Pressing is used to realign the weave of your fabric, either to to encourage the fabric to move itself around your stitches, integrating the thread and the weave, or to make clean seams and hems. Pressing makes a huge difference in the look of your finished item: if your sewing instructions tell you to press, listen to them!


This week's assignment:

1. We'll start by sewing the pleats. Grab one of your skirt pieces. Fold your skirt with right sides facing each other (wrong sides out) and roughly line up the furthest pleat line on the outside with the next line in (be sure to always align each pleat with the one nearest to it, and to start from the outside and move in. You can start with the line furthest outside on either side of the skirt). To align your transferred lines perfectly, pin the fold together as shown in the picture, making sure that your pins pass both lines. Pinning the lines together makes it really easy to sew the pleats perfectly.


2. Sew precisely along your transferred line, removing your pins as you go and backstitching at the top and bottom to keep everything secure.


3. Unfold your fabric, and you have a pleat!


4. Move to the next transferred line in, and fold it over to meet the line nearest to it. Align the lines perfectly with pins the same way you did for the first pleat.


5. Sew, and you have two pleats! Now repeat on the other side of your skirt piece, starting again from the outside pleat, then moving to the inside pleat.


6. Repeat steps 1-5 on the other skirt piece.

7. Press the top 2" of your skirt pieces from the back side so that the seam allowances are folded towards the outside edges.


8. Flip your skirt pieces over and check out your handiwork - you've mastered pleats!


9. Now take one of your interfaced waistband pieces and one of your pleated skirt pieces. Place the waistband on top of the skirt, with right sides facing. The waistband should be "frowning" at you (as shown in the picture). Pin the waistband to the top edge of the skirt. This is a bit fiddly, so don't hesitate to use lots of pins!



10. Stitch the waistband to the skirt with a 5/8" seam allowance. Trim your seam allowance down to about 1/4" and zig zag over the edge.


11. Repeat steps 9 and 10 with the other skirt piece and interfaced waistband piece.

12. Unfold your waistband and press the seam allowance (from behind) towards the top of the skirt. Repeat with the other side.



Wow, it's really starting to look like a skirt! That's it for this week - next week we'll tackle the side seams and the zipper (and if that thought fills you with fear, don't worry! After next week, zippers will never seem scary again). Don't forget to upload pictures of your progress to the Flickr group!


(***PS - there's been some discussion over in the Flickr group about changing the pleats on the back side of the skirt to darts. I'm working on putting together some directions for this - I'll keep you updated!)