I love pleats! They remind me so much of my Grandma. All her ‘smart’ skirts were pleated. What I don’t like is pleat math. I am absolutely crap at math and I can get myself into a tizz working out the math puzzles that present when sewing. I can’t really visualize how the measurements apply to fabric until I am doing it. When I have made pleated skirts in the past, they have been pleated all the way around. I just pleat a long length till it is close to my waist measurement and fudge it to fit. Lazy but it’s worked for me. I understood that if you intend to pleat the whole way around the skirt, you’ll need about 3 times your waist measurement. Simple enough….or is it? When I was planning this skirt, I came across this awesome article which explains the complications with that method. If you read that article, you are probably confused, I was! I knew I wanted to pleat the sides but not the front or back of my skirt, maybe some gathers. I couldn’t figure out the math, so I decided to start with a long length and work it out when I got there! Sometimes it’s a case of “I made this up as I went along, with stuff I already had”. So this tutorial might not be my best tutorial for pleats but it will show you how I made this sweet skirt and the other techniques I used!
The whole fun of retro skirts is the massive swingy, twirly volume! But they use oodles of fabric. It certainly can add cost to a project. Someone asked me why these sorts of skirts (circle or swing style) cost so much. Well, I need around 4m of fabric to make a circle skirt (see above) and most fabrics in Australia average $22/m. So that’s $88 in fabric alone! Plus all the extras like interfacing, zips, matching thread and of course time! It’s super handy to be able to sew because you build up a stash to raid and you can mix and match what you have and labour is just your own. Not that your own time isn’t a valuable commodity but you can choose to tap into it as a resource. Anyway, the thing about this skirt is there are super long and large fabric pieces. They do get very ungainly to handle and also to photograph. Yipes! Couldn’t fit it for a floor pic! I’ve documented as best I can for you.
I had 2 yards or about 180 cm of this gorgeous stripey fruit fabric, which is about 1.5 ish times my waist measurement. I was going for maximum floof at the hem, so I knew I would have to cut it in half lengthwise (hot dog style) to have enough length to pleat a really full skirt. But my fabric was only 44” or 112cm wide and it did shrink a bit it the pre wash. Let’s quickly talk about prewashing. I don’t always pre wash because my washer dryer combo takes anywhere from 3-5 hours to wash and then dry and I want to get on. Also, I am lazy. If I don’t prewash, I cut a square and measure it, then I hit with the hottest possible iron with loads of steam and iron till dry. I remeasure and I can see it it’s shrunk. Then I can account for that. It’s a bit dodgy but probably fine for a skirt and less so for more fitted garments. I did actually pre wash this because I bought it on eBay from a seller that I have bought from before and had shrinkage issues with in the past. Anyway, I decided to add a black band at the bottom to make up the length and also to ground the skirt. It’s a perfect way to fix fabric shortage. I went with 2m black cotton poplin from ze stash for the bottom band and waistband. I also used a zipper and interfacing that I found while looking for poplin. Since I only had a rough plan, I decided to just start and see what happened!
First thing was to separate the fabric, down the length, into two massive strips. I aligned the stripes at the selvages so the stripes matched (not perfectly even at the actual selvage, deal with that later) and saw I would have to cut down the middle of a stripe. That way when I sew the two massive strips together at the short end my stripes would match at the side seam. I just eyeballed half way and cut down the length. If I didn’t have stripes to guide me, I would have pressed it in half and cut the fold. For the black hem border, I decided to use a double layer. Partly because the poplin was lighter weight than cotton and partly to make the inside seams neat. I cut two 12” or 30.5cm deep strips the full 2m length of the poplin. That should give me about a 5” or 13cm finished border and I could deal with the extra length later.
I started the sewing portion by sewing the black fabric to the newly cut long edge of my stripes. I laid the fabrics right side together, without pinning. I am not pinning that length, if I can get away with it! I sewed with my stripe fabric face up and aligned my needle so that I could sew along the edge of the black stripe. I would have just used the edge of my presser foot as a guide but stripes. I did this for both long sections. I trimmed any extra black fabric, so the black was the same length as the stripes. I then pressed the seam, seam allowances towards the black fabric. While I was at the iron, I pressed the bottom, free edge of the black up towards the stripes about a ½” or 1.25cm. I’m all for combining steps when you have nearly 4m to press and this comes in handy later.
I took my two giant lengths of fabric and pinned them, right sides together, along the short edge. I put my first pin at the seam between the black and the stripe fabric, matching those seams. Matching stripes always looks better and the best way to make them line up, is to use lots of pins! Match the stripe and pin, all the way along the short edge and then the black too. Short edge pinned and matched up. I sewed the seam at the edge of my presser foot, unpinning carefully as I went. I was sewing at Mums and getting the overlocker out was too hard, so I used the mock overlock function on the sewing machine to finish the edge. I only took it down the striped portion because the black seam will be enclosed later and I didn’t want the bulk. Give the seam a press and press it to one side. You should now have a near 4m long striped panel with a black panel at the bottom.
Personally, I find hemming a pleated or gathered skirt that is already pleated/gathered a huge pain! We will finish the black band or hem right now, while all is still flat and easy. Starting at your newly sewn side seam, pull the folded edge of the black fabric up to just over the seam and stitch line where the black meets the stripes. You really want that fold so it just ever so (3mm ish) covers the previous stitch line. Place a pin on the RIGHT side to keep it in place. Work out from this centre spot and keep pinning till the whole, crazy length is pinned. Hit the sewing machine and from the RIGHT side, stitch in the ditch of the previous seam (see, you can remove pins as you go coz they are on the right side too). Or if you are using a single colour fabric band and have a good thread match, just on the bottom band. The idea is to catch the inner fabric, enclosing the seam allowances and giving you a double layer hem band. Once you are all done, give your whole hem band a lovely, good press.
Okay, I told you pleating math was hard! I sort of had a go at what I wanted, starting at the side seam and then worked out if it would fit. I had a few goes because I wanted to try double stacking pleats. It’s some rough and ready! People always want to know how I did stuff, even if I just made it up! So at both sides of the front and both sides of the back there are two sets of pleats. First a 4” double stack box pleat and then a knife pleat that faces the box pleat. Using the side seam as 0 mark 4” increments with a pin, your last pin being at 24”. Take pin 2 and bring it to the centre seam and pin down (pins 1 & 3 should be touching, on top of each other). Take the next available pin 4 and bring to centre seam 0, so pin 5 is on top of pins 1 & 3. Take pin 7 and fold it under (towards side seam) to meet pleat folds at pin 5. Pins 6 & 8 should be on top of each other, opening pointing to the open edge of the fabric. Pin 8 should meet pin 6. Bring pin 9 to pin 7 and 10 to 6. Then for the knife pleat 12 to 10. Whoa! Maths in real life! If you get really stuck, I can try and make you a little video of what I did with the pleats to ease the pain.
So basically, I did that at the side seam and replicated in reverse for the other side seam. I used chalk to draw a straight line down the open sides of my skirt, for seam allowance. I was pretty generous on that. about 1” or 2.5cm. I repeated the seam pleats, this time using the chalked line as a beginning point or 0, rather than the seam line. I still wasn’t worried about waist size, I planned to gather the unpleated sections in the front and back to fit the waistband later. So I hit the sewing machine and stay stitched the pleats down with as straight stitch. I only sewed the pleated sections, not the currently flat bits that will be gathered. Because I was too lazy to trim the selvedge when I matched my stripes, I knew that as long as my stitches were on the selvedge, that I will later cover with a waistband, they wouldn’t be seen. But if you actually measured, sew in the seam allowance.
With the pleats secured, I moved on to the waistband. I cut a 6” or 15cm deep poplin strip that was the length of my waist measurement plus 2” or 5cm seam allowance. I cut it so that one of the long edges was the selvage edge, so I could avoid finishing that edge or folding it under, as we did when finishing the bottom band. I interfaced the whole waistband with some fairly lightweight interfacing that was black. I pressed a crease in, halfway along the length, so I could match it up with the side seam. I set that aside for a minute so I could gather.
I chucked some purple thread in my bobbin, so I could differentiate the gathering basting stitches from the previous pleat stay stitching. I do try not to confuse myself! I switched to a long basting stitch (4mm) and ran a line of stitches along the flat, unpleated sections. I was sure to leave long thread tales and didn’t backstitch. I pulled the purple bobbin threads to gather up the fabric a bit and then I grabbed that waistband. I lined up the side seam with the halfway crease on the waistband, right sides together. Then I pinned the open edges and then along the pleated sections. I rearranged the gathered sections to fit the remaining waistband. That should be the whole waistband pinned. Remember that my waistband edges didn’t quite match because I matched the stripe? I just pinned them along the stripe to match. In the end the extra seam allowance will be tucked inside the waistband and no one will be any the wiser. Unless they read this. I carefully stitched down the waistband, minding all the pleats and gathers as I went. Phew!
Now to the tricky business of getting the zipper in, right between those pleats. I really should have used an invisible zipper, which would ameliorate much of the awkwardness that is about to happen. But I didn’t have one and I had no way to get one and I soldiered on with a regular zipper. My usual zipper MO (and also waistband finishing) is detailed in this post, so if you need a sensible step by step, check that out first and then you’ll understand what the hell I’m trying to do. If you sensibly use an invisible zipper, this YouTube makes sense of how to do that. I laid the open edges of the skirt together and pinned the length, from waistband to hem. I matched up seams and stripes as I pinned. I sewed with a longer basting stich, from halfway up the waistband (where the zipper pull will sit when finished) to where the zipper will stop (about 9” or 23cm of total zipper). I switched to a regular stitch and back stitched and then sewed all the way to the hem and backstitched. I tried to sew in a way that meant the pleats touched at the basting part but weren’t caught up in the stitch line at all. I did pretty good in the end, they are about 2mm off and nothing got trapped where it shouldn’t.
I positioned the zip so that the zipper was centred over the basting stitches and pinned it down on the RIGHT side. It was fiddly but I got there. Normally, I would sew a 3 sided box around the zipper teeth, starting from halfway up the waistband, down one side, across the zipper itself and back up the other side (please, see how I normally do it if you haven’t already). But then I would be sewing the pleats down. So I started my box underneath the pleat! Down, across the zip and back up, tucking my stitches under the pleat. It was massively awkward to sew but the bonus is that your stitches are hidden by the pleat – genius! Then I sewed down the part of the zipper that is in the waistbands with two separate stich lines. Remove the basting stiches and voila! Yep, I got that zip in!
Final step is to fold over the waistband, just like we did for the hem band except for not tucking it under because I used the selvage. Again, go ahead and pin around on the RIGHT side. You can stitch in the ditch but since I had a black waistband, I just sewed a couple of mm in, all along the waistband. I gave it all a quick press and unbelievably, I was done! Giant, floofy skirt achieved.
I’m sorry guys! That was a whole lot to read through! If you have read my tutorials before, you’ll know that thy are usually much clearer and less confusing. That’s because I tend to make things a few times before I post but I knew this was probably a ‘one time’ kind of skirt. It goes to show that I don’t always know what I’m doing and that is A okay! It’s how we learn and develop and sometimes it’s nice to make it up as you go along. I always want to know how someone else made a thing, even if they are a bit frightened to show how they dodge things to make it work. I am really pleased with this skirt and I don’t think it looks improvised. It has that crazy voluminous shape I was after, without being pleated all the way around and I am so glad for that black hem band! The hem band may have been a way to cheat the amount of fabric I had but I really think it grounds the skirt and adds something special. I love to hear stories about improvised sewing and when things don’t go to plan (my lemonade skirt, ahem) so if you have a tale to tell, please leave it the comments for us all to share xx
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