Swing Skirt in a Day

So the title should really be "I Could Have Made This Skirt in a Day if I had Applied Myself and Actually Focused on What I was Doing and not Wasted so Much Time."

In reality it took me three days to finish the skirt and it only cost me about a dollar to make. How so? I bought 7 yards of fabric from a thrift store for seven dollars and I only used about a yard of it. Everything else I used was free.

This skirt is totally doable in a day if you don't do it the same way I did. Which essentially makes most of this post irrelevant, so feel free to not continue to the end if you're looking for a helpful step-by-step tutorial, this is not going to be that.

What I used:

• Thrift store fabric

• Buttons (or a zipper for a much more simplified version)

• Matching thread and whatever else you'd need for sewing

It may also be helpful to raid your grandmother's sewing room for a ruler, microscopic piece of chalk, and fabric scissors

To start off I took the end of the fabric, folded it over, and made it about the length I wanted my skirt to be. Since I was looking to make a full circle skirt, I traced out a quarter of a circle from the corner and then a smaller one above that for the waist of the skirt. It came out to be 32" long.

Handily enough, this ruler just so happened to be the exact length I wanted the skirt.

Very carefully cut out your skirt out. Then you may or may not find that you've not cut a big enough hole to fit around your waist. To remedy this I could have cut the waist slightly larger, but instead I chose to cut two more mini-panels to give the skirt a bit more volume. At this point I was dreaming (not at this exact moment but one night as I was imagining what I would write in this post) about how to get the waist measurement exactly and I thought that all that handy dandy geometry I learned in school was finally going to come into practice. However, upon waking and actually working my thought process out it just didn’t work. So unfortunately, you just have to guess the waist size and I’m still stuck with the idea that nothing I learned in my math classes is really applicable to real life.

It's also nice to have a little buddy "helping" out with my project. One of the things I miss most at home is not having pets around to keep me company. As you may have guessed by now, I was not at home while sewing this skirt. In fact, I was far, far away from my cozy little duplex room in Idaho, and in the Land of 10,000 Lakes (or Minnesota as it's more commonly known [actually, I think it's commonly known as either]).

I guess I could have titled this post "Making a Skirt During My Vacation to Minnesota." Anyhow, water under the bridge. Back to the skirt.

Oh yeah, cut out a waistband about an envelope's width wide and as long as your waist is around plus a few inches of overlap for a button in the back.

Terribly blurry, and I think I pretty much ended up re-cutting the waistband so it was the correct length because this was too short (noticing a theme here?)

Next up, grab your iron and iron out the substantial number of wrinkles in your material.

If something smells like it’s melting that’s probably normal. I mean it really shouldn’t smell like that but it could be anything from the fabric to the iron to some wires in the wall. All told, it’s not worth worrying about.

Pin the sides of the skirt panels together.

Bonus points if the pins are all the same color and you weren’t even trying.

Next pick out a matching thread from the many options you have available.

Honestly, so many options how is one supposed to make a decision?

Oh yeah, you just pick the one that most closely matches your fabric.

Amazingly, I found one that matched my fabric pretty much exactly.

Grab a matching bobbin.

Then thread your sewing machine.

Select the stitch setting.

Sew up the sides of the skirt

I used a half inch seam allowance here.

Once the sides get sewn press them open.

Once the side seams (I keep calling them sides but they're more like between the back and the side seams, seams), anyhow, once those are done move on to the back.

I didn't measure the slit, but I figured that maybe the fact that it's on a cutting mat might be helpful.

Pin most of the way up the back of the skirt leaving a bit of an opening so that you'll be able to get the skirt on. I mean I don't know about you but my waist is smaller than some other parts of my body, which a skirt such as this has to fit over.

Press this seam open too.

Now comes the fun part, you get to attach the waistband to the main body of the skirt.

Of course before that can happen you've got to prepare the strip of fabric that will eventually become the waist. To do that, fold the whole strip in half longwise (lengthwise?). Iron that, then fold it open and iron the long edge over about an eight of an inch.

Now I think it's vitally essential that both sides be folded over the same amount so that the edges line up. You can accomplish this by using a ruler... I used mine purely for picture purposes.

I then threw the ruler away and folded it over and just wung it and it turned out fine. Even if it doesn't you can always just re-iron it in half to make the edges match.

Then, measure it for sure for sure around your waist and chop off any excess you may have added on after the first time you cut it too short.

Turns out this was how much too much I had. The green pin marks the actual size my waistband needed to be. I left just a bit of extra on for some overlap in the back for securing purposes.

Not pictured: I folded over a quarter inch on the short end of the waistband to create a finished edge. Nestle the folded over slit of the skirt back and nestle it snugly into finished edge of the band. Pin the other edge to the exact length of the circumference of your waist. There will be some extra length at the end, don't worry about that for now.

Find the middle of the waist band and pin that to the middle of the skirt.

Arrange the rest of the skirt swingily between those pins.

I really didn't want to gather the top of the skirt because, I kind of dislike the way gathers look, especially for a swing skirt. Unfortunately, just laying it out like that didn't look the way I wanted it so I ended up gathering it anyway. Pleats would work too, I'd say it's personal preference here.

Cinch the gathers down so they fit within the waistband's length.

I don't think this would have worked without the inordinate amount of pins I used. Even still I don’t think I had enough.

Seriously though, you can never use too many pins, especially since my fabric was weirdly slippery.

Now, I'd like for you to think that my sewing skills are very professional and everything turns out looking beautiful on my first try. Well, it turns out beautifully, it just has a few flaws. Case in point, I would have loved for this seam to be neat and narrow. This one didn't quite work out like that, but it's not so noticeable that someone would notice. Except it's now become noticeable because I pointed it out.

Needless to say, it all worked out well enough.

Try the whole thing on just to get a feel for the fit. Adjust whatever needs adjusted as necessary until it fits the way you want it to.

Once that's been figured out you can pick out a button from a button tin you you might find in a cupboard.

One of my favorite things to do is sort through buttons. There's something really satisfying about it. I used to have a cookie tin that I was starting a collection of my own but during one of my many moves I lost it. But, I'm probably going to inherit this one someday, so it's not that big of a deal.

There's literally so many great old buttons inside this tin that deciding which ONE to use was nearly impossible so I picked out a few that I liked.

And then I looked out the window and it was snowing! It was unusual because the two days before were really nice and sunny and warm.

I narrowed the button selection down to just four. These ones were my favorites, but I still couldn’t decide which one to go with.

I was going to put this to an Instagram poll so that my followers could just do all the deciding for me. Then, I remembered that I was currently taking a break from Insta and that wasn’t going to be an option. So I did it the old fashioned way. I went around the house and had everyone vote for the button they liked the most.

These were the results of that poll. As you can see I didn’t have a huge number of voters and a few of them preferred not to cast their vote.

I then took none of this advice I had asked for and picked the one I liked best and used that.

As a side note, I did really, really like the silver one, I just didn’t think it would work well with this particular project.

Measure the width of the button so you know what size to make your button hole.

This can be done by machine. In fact, I would strongly suggest doing it by machine. However, if you, like me, find that your sewing machine is mostly incapable of creating button holes (still don't know if it's operator error or actual sewing machine error). As such I sewed all my button holes by hand. I don't even think I can explain how because I'm not sure I did them right, it's probably just easiest to look up someone else's tutorial on how to do them.

And bam, in those three simple steps you've got a workable button hole.

Now there remains, at this moment, an unattractive hole in the back of the skirt. This could be remedied with a zipper, which would probably be easiest, honestly. I however, struggle with zippers (and I didn't have one available), so I went for a button up back.

And that meant about a million more button holes. Technically it was only eight, but hand sewing button holes is a pain-in-the-rear. But, I did it and it looks pretty cool!

Pardon the one chipped nail there.

Lastly, make a nice narrow rolled hem around the bottom of the skirt to finish it off.

Just like that you're all done and have a fantastic swing skirt that you made by hand, without a pattern, and in the face of mild doubt from family members.

Without further ado...

The Grand(ish) Reveal:

It turns out it's pretty difficult to do a photoshoot with yourself. Hence these action shots. And I didn't take any more because I was freezing.

I do also realize that wearing stripes with polka-dots is frowned upon, but hey, I don’t think it even looks that bad with this outfit.