The Weetwood Skirt + Tutorial

I needed a new skirt for the local race day, and because I'm me I decided I wanted to make a skirt.  I fell in love with the skirt on the Blake Dress by Mingo and Grace!  The only problem was that it's a kids dress pattern and there is no way it would have fitted me!  I also loved how it was made out of neoprene.  It just so happens that Scuba Knit is my favourite fabric at the moment.

Anyway I rummaged through the remanent bin at my local Spotlight (more details to come in another post!) and scored with 1m of peach and .4m of navy scuba knit for $2/m!

 

This was the result!  Please excuse the stuff in the background, I'm still only half unpacked! I used inverted box pleats to give the volume, which thankfully looks good when worn high enough on the waist!  I've included a little tutorial below, though I didn't take photos through the process, leave a comment below and I'll answer and questions :)

 

I used 1.4m of fabric to make this skirt however that has made it quite long and you could certainly get away with less, somewhere about 1.1/1.2 would be my recommendation.

 

To start with I cut a 6"xWOF strip of the peach fabric to use as my waist band.  I then cut this about 5cm shorter than my wait measurement because the scuba knit has a lovely stretch.  if you were not using a stretch fabric add enough onto your waist measurement to insert a zipper.

 

I then cut the navy and remaining peach fabric in half and stitched them along the WOF.  

 

Here is where it gets a little tricky!  I then lay my waist band on the floor folded in half, so it was half my waist measurement, and lay one set of the now striped fabric below it.  I found the centre of skirt bottom and created an inversed 6" box pleat (so that a 3" pleat was on either side of the centre).  I knew I wanted 3 pleats on the front and the back of the skirt so I measured the waist band and worked out I could fit 1 5" inverted box pleat on each side of the centre pleat so that was what I did.  I then tacked the pleats in place.  Make sure you have multiple pins in all your pleats so they don't move when you tack them :)

 

I repeated the same process for the back of the skirt.

 

In all honesty the easiest way to do this would be to divide your 1/2 waist measurement by 3 and take a little off each measurement to work out the size of your pleats :) But why would you do things the easy way!

 

Note that you might need to trim some fabric of the width so that it fits on the waist band.  If you're having the opposite issues (too much waist band) make your pleats smaller, those box pleats eat fabric!

 

I then stitched up the side of my skirt and added the waist band (folded in half so it measured 3").

 

Hem as normal.

 

Then slip on and enjoy your new Weetwood Skirt!

 

I'm trying to work out if I want to cut a bit of length off my skirt as it reminds me of my winter skirts from school!  I'll see how it goes. I think I'll make another one soon enough and when I do I'll make sure to take some photos to add here. 

 

If you make one I'd love to see some photos!  Either comment below or email me at emma@ahandstitchedlife.com.   You can also use the hashtag #ahandstitchedlife on social media :)

 

Emma :)