How to Sew a Vintage Skirt | Tutorial

Hi friends! In this video, I'm going to show you how to sew a basic t-length pleated skirt. This skirt is inspired by advertising that I've seen from 40s and 50s, so that's kind of the era that it is of. This is a super easy project. All of the pieces are just rectangles, so we're not sewing any curves. There's nothing complicated. I think this is something that anyone can sew, even if you don't have much sewing experience. You can do this with a sewing machine or entirely by hand, which will take a little bit longer, but I think is totally doable for a beginner. This is a simple pleated skirt. I made it t-length, so about mid-calf, and it closes down the center front with buttons. I also added two giant rectangular patch pockets to the front, which are optional. Who wouldn't want these ginormous patch pockets? I can fit so much. They're so big, I had to add a button. This is so big. Like, I put my phone in it, and it just takes up like the first quarter of it. First, I measure the length I want the skirt to be. For the main skirt pieces, you'll need to cut two rectangles. I'm cutting mine the length that my skirt needs to be, plus two inches at the bottom for hem allowance, and one inch at the top for seam allowance at the waist. The width of my panels is the width of my fabric. For the waistband, I'm cutting about two and three quarters inches by my waist plus three inches. Because of the way my fabric was, I had to cut this in two pieces with a seam at the center back, but if you have fabric for it, feel free to cut this as one piece. Then, I cut my pocket rectangles. I think mine ended up being about nine and three quarters inches by 12 inches, but you can cut these however big you want them. First, I sewed the center back seam. For this, I lay both skirt pieces right sides together and sew along one of the short sides. Because I'm using the selvage as the edge of my fabric, I don't need to finish these edges, but if you have a raw edge here, meaning you cut the fabric at this edge, then you may want to finish this with pinking shears or with a French seam or any other seam finish you like. Then, I sewed the seam at the center back of my waistband. If you cut your waistband as one piece, this isn't necessary. I pressed the seam open. Then, I folded my waistband in half lengthwise and pressed. So, now we have the super fun task of pleating your entire long rectangle. This is over three times my waist. You could probably do this only like two and a half times, and it would still look good, but I have a little bit over three times my waist, and you're pleating that into one times my waist, plus about three quarters and three quarters of an inch of overlap, plus seam allowances at the ends. Yeah, I'm kind of just making this up as I go, and I'm using my check pattern as a reference. So, I'm actually trying to pattern match this so that when you look at this, it is a continuous pattern, like the pattern doesn't get cut off. So, I did four. One, two, three, four, and a half. Then, this gets brought, and we bring the half here. So, I've pleated down my fabric, and it fits my waist. I think I did about, I think I did about an inch and a half pleats from the back. There are about five of them on each side, and then I switched to doing an inch pleats with the same spacing here. So, the inch pleats are about an inch apart, so they don't overlap, but the inch and a half ones do kind of overlap and stack on top of each other. So, that's what I did. If you don't feel like doing that, like me, I suggest you just play around with your pleats and see what you like and what works and fits your waist. So, yeah, this is what I have. The front little bit, I decided to leave flat, so that's just going to have a small, unpleated area in the front, although some of this will be like a fairly wide seam allowance for the buttons. Now, I'm going to sew a line of basting stitches by machine along these pleats to hold them in place, and then I will sew one side of the waistband right sides together. This is, this is ironed in half right now. There we go. One side, one side of the waistband is going to be sewn right sides together to this. Now, if you are doing this all by hand, I would suggest you just quickly hand baste your pleats into place. You don't need to do like a full row of back stitches or anything, just baste them into place and then you can sew your waistband on. So, now we have our rectangle of fabric that's pleated down to a little bit larger than the waist measurement, and we're going to sew this right sides together to the waistband. Friend, how is it? That's my skirt. What do you think? Is it good? Is it bad? Does it need more scratches? Oh, shit! I'm just getting a little piece of fusible interfacing and putting it kind of at the end of my waistband here and just fusing it here, and then this is going to end up folded this way and then this way, and that's just to have reinforcement for the button and the buttonhole. So, I'm doing that on both sides. Now, I'm going to fold this edge in. The seam allowance is going up. I'm folding this edge in, and then this edge comes in at the top, and then this comes down to meet the seam where the waistband is sewn onto the skirt. So, I have this nice clean finish, and then here, I'm just, the selvedge is getting folded back, and then I'm going to hand sew, probably with a whip stitch, the edge of the waistband to this seam line. If you really wanted to, you could do this by machine, by stitching in the ditch, which is where you stitch in the seam line here, so that it's invisible from this side, but you're catching the fabric on this side. Personally, I'd rather just hand sew it, but that's up to you. For this waistband seam, you can do fairly large stitches. As you can see here, I've done pretty big whip stitches, and this is fine. It's still functional. You do not need to be doing 12 stitches per inch. If you want to, you can, but doing stitches that come up like this still are functional and still are invisible on the outside. So, now you should have a rectangle with a waistband and pleats, and both of the edges are pretty much finished off. The edge of the waistband is finished, and then you have your edge of your skirt is folded back twice. The next step for me is going to be hemming. So, I'm leaving my center back seam pressed open, and I'm going to fold this up about half of an inch, and then up again about an inch and a half. So, this is what my hem will look like, and I'm going to do that all the way around, and then sew it by hand, just with a little whip stitch. And again, if you're using checked fabric, you can use your check as your guide, so you don't need to measure separately. You can just say, I'm going to have my hem from the middle of this blue stripe to the beginning of this blue stripe, and just follow that all the way around. So, I'm going to go ahead and pin that. I am, again, starting in this corner, and I'm going to kind of hide a little back tack, and then this is pretty much the same thing as I did on the waistband. We're going around the corner, and these stitches aren't going to take a lot of stress. They're just kind of to hold this corner of the hem in place. So, for my pockets, I've pressed under all four edges just once, and then the top edge, I've pressed under twice, and I'm going to sew that with a little hem by hand, just so that it matches everything else. And you can do this however you like. Now that the pockets are hemmed, you can put your skirt on and pin it closed, and see where you want the pockets to sit. So, I think I want them somewhere around here. So, I will figure that out and then pin it on, and then I will take this off and figure out how to do the other one symmetrically. Okay, now that we have our pockets pinned into place, we are going to stitch them on, and you have a few different options with this. You can do a straight stitch by machine and kind of backstitch here, go all the way around the pocket, and then backstitch at the other side, and you would like put your needle in and pivot at the corners. Also, you can hand stitch them in, which I think is what I'm going to do. So, however you stitch this in, you do want to make sure that your stitching is really strong, because these are pockets, and if you're planning on putting anything in them, they're going to take a good amount of strain. So, you want your stitching, especially here at these like kind of top corners, where it would pull if you were pulling on the edge of the pocket, you really want to make sure that that is strong. So, I'm not going to be doing a like one or two thread catching kind of slip stitch, because I don't think that will be strong enough, especially with the kind of like cotton fabric like this. Cotton is not the strongest material. So, I think I'm going to do a whip stitch around the edge that's fairly close together, but catching a good amount of the fabric to make sure that it's really strong. So, that will be visible on the front side, but I think that I am okay with that. So, yeah, let's do that. If you are sewing this by hand, I recommend using a thread that is fairly strong and do it doubled over, at least doubled over. If you want, you so now we have our waistband done. We have our hem done. We have our pockets attached. Now, we need a closure. So, for the closure, I'm going to be using buttons. I did not have seven matching buttons that went with this fabric in my stash, so I'm going to be using all different buttons to go down the center front. So, to start off your buttonholes, you need to mark the size of each button. I'm doing this here with tailor's chalk, but you can do this with pins or with pencil or pen on the back side. Then, you need to open up your buttonhole. If you have a buttonhole tool, you can use that. I don't, so I'm using scissors. Try to open it up along one thread of the fabric. It's going to be hard. Just try. If you want, you can check to make sure that your button still fits through your buttonhole. Always good to check. To start the buttonhole, sew a whip stitch around the edge of where you cut. This is not your buttonhole stitch. This is just to encase the raw edge and kind of keep those fibers of the fabric in place. This can be done with just one thread. You don't need to double up your thread for this, although you can. Now, for your actual buttonhole stitch, you're going to come up through the slit a little bit like a whip stitch, and then you're going to take the thread and bring it behind the needle, underneath and behind the needle, and then over and behind the needle, and then you're going to pull your needle down. Hopefully, this makes sense. What it does is creates a small knot of thread on the inside of your button, which is kind of the thread buffer between your fabric and your button as it's sliding through. If you're confused, there are much better and slower and more in-depth tutorials for buttonholes on the internet, so I highly recommend you go and check that out. So, ideally for buttonholes, you would be using silk buttonhole twist, which is a very thick silk thread. It's expensive and it's also hard to find, so if you don't have silk buttonhole twist, you can use whatever thread you have on hand. I recommend doubling it over or even doing three or four strands of thread to make sure that your thread is thick enough and strong enough. To sew on your buttons, use thread doubled over. I like to tie a knot at the end and then go through the button by itself, and then back through, and then through in between my two threads so that I kind of am attached to the button to start. Then I go through the fabric and all the way back up through the button a couple of times. Then you come out between the fabric and the button, and you want to make sure that your stitches are a little bit loose here so that you can do this, and you're going to wrap your thread around the button to create a shank. Then you can tie a knot in your thread by wrapping it and then going through your thread loop once or twice, and then sew through your shank once, and then tie your thread off however you like to. I bring it to the fabric, kind of go between the two layers, and then come out somewhere and snip off my thread. Now that the buttons are sewn on, the last step is to make a matching mask and hair flower. Quick note on masks, make sure that you have at least two layers of a tightly woven cotton fabric in addition to your fashion fabric, just because most fabrics aren't actually very filtering. Any kind of synthetic fabric, knit fabric, is not actually going to be doing anything. So if you don't have a filter, make sure you're using at least two layers of a tightly woven cotton fabric so that your mask will actually be somewhat effective. Thanks so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed this video. If you want to see more of me, don't forget to hit that subscribe button. No, people might count words that make sense. Thanks so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed this video. If you want to see more of me, feel free to hit that subscribe button and click the little bell thingy, um, that people tell you to click so you get notifications when I post a new video, and have a nice day! Bye, friends!