This was my first attempt at making a true genuine Maxi Skirt. I have always wanted to make one of these skirts but sometimes working with knits can be tricky. However, when I saw this live tutorial on my favorite Youtube channel " Missouri Star Quilt Company with Jenny Doan, I just couldn't resist giving it a shot. Now a couple of things that I've not done before and that is work with a garment pattern that I had to download and put together. This was challenge number one. You will see more and more these days pattern makers (especially independent pattern makers) giving you the option of downloading the pattern. The plus side of this is that you save some money. However, the downside is that it can be a lot of pages to print on your printer. What I loved about this pattern is that the tutorial was online the creators offered it for free and also offer the paper pattern of which you can purchase from their website. Since I wasn't quite sure about tackling this project although it is a VERY SIMPLE project to attempt and a great one for beginners, I opted to go free and download it. This challenged me to try something new and reminded me of my challenge that I made myself as part of this yearlong journey that I was to GROW in my sewing. I'm glad I did. Now I went to my local Joann's and purchased about 2 1/2 yards of knit fabric when it was on sale for 40% off. This particular fabric runs about $14.99/yd regularly. So getting it at about almost half price, that wasn't so bad. I decided to go with something for Fall because more than likely I will wear this with boots. I loved the hounds-tooth print. I'm a petite lady and so I don't wear really long skirts too often other than with boots during the cold months. I haven't done this during the summer yet so I suppose I'll try it this upcoming spring. The designers also have a knit fabric collection that they designed for Riley & Blake. The prints are really nice. I will be purchasing some at a later date. You can purchase them from the Missouri Star Quilt Company for a very reasonable price. You can also purchase a sample bundle collection from the designers at their website (5 yds of 1 yd of the prints from the collection).
The beauty of this pattern is that it runs from a XS to a 2XL so just about anyone can enjoy wearing this skirt. Thank the designers. My biggest challenge was working with the elastic. If you look at the picture you will see that the elastic is attached directly to the skirt. You may see more and more easy projects where you just attach the knit elastic to the material to make thes easy skirts. The 1"- 2" knit elastic comes in a variety of colors. It is very soft and does stretch very nicely without losing its shape. My challenge was stretching it to get a good fit to the skirt as I was attaching it. I'm going to keep making some more so that I can get this down a little more efficiently. Now some things I attempted while trying to make this skirt.
You can make this skirt either with a regular sewing machine using a stretch stitch or with a serger. I also had a serger cutter attachment foot which performs like a serger but on a regular sewing machine.
I got a bit frustrated and so I just went back to using a regular stretch stitch and everything turned out just fine. I guess my next set of challenges are to go get out my serger and do a few projects on it so I can get better at using it and probably make these skirts a little faster.
The designers of the pattern estimate that the skirt is a 20-30 minute project. How cool is that? Well with that my friends I will go ahead and sign off.
I encourage you to give this project a try. Post your comments and photos.
Sincerely,
The Sew Stormer
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