Fitted Skirt Session 6: Attached Waistband

The next waistline we're going to talk about is an attached waistband. So in your worksheet, there's a calculation to do two different types of waistbands. There's one that is an overlap and then there's just the standard waistband. The standard waistband is pretty simple so I'm gonna do the more elaborate one which is the overlapped waistband, so that I can show you how that works. So I have my waistband here and it's cut according to the calculations for an overlapped waistband.

And you'll see that on one long edge I've already ironed it over a half an inch. That'll just make things a little bit easier. Here I have my skirt. I've got my darts already sewn, my zipper installed. Now, you'll remember from the worksheet that there are two different measurements for the skirt because you're adding an inch for the waistband or two inches, depending on how tall you want your waistband to be, you have to remove an inch from the skirt.

So that's in the calculations and it's written in your worksheet. So remember that this pattern that we're working from is just a hair different from the one that we drew previously 'cause that one was for faced. This one has an inch less to account for the waistband. So we're gonna add that now. The first thing we want to do is we want to leave a half an inch of this waistband kind of hanging over the zipper.

So we're just gonna put a half an inch hanging over the zipper right there. And then we're going to pin the waistband to the raw edge of the waistband all the way around. And then we are going to stitch it on using a half an inch seam allowance. You'll notice we're putting the right sides together, of course. And we are also making sure that we are leaving the fold that we ironed in is hanging out down here.

We're not pinning the fold to the top of the skirt. All right, we're coming to the end here. So, you'll notice there is a big bunch leftover. There's only half an inch on the other side. Now, if you are doing the waistband that fits a little better, not the overlapped, you would have a half an inch here.

But we have quite a bit more than that and I'll show you what to do with that when we get there. So let's stitch this on with a half inch seam. All right, we're done stitching our waistband on. So we can pull out all of our pins here and trim our threads. All right.

So now what we need to do much like the facing is we need to iron the waistband away from the skirt. Once you've ironed your waistband away from the skirt, we can finish these edges here. Let's do the short one first. Now again, if you're not making the overlapped waistband, you're gonna finish both ends just the exact same way as I'm showing you now. All right, let's try to get this out of the way.

All right, here's our short end. We want to make sure that when we sew this, there's a seam right here where I sewed this on. This edge is going to overlap that seam like this and that's what your waistband is going to look like. But look at all this raw, messy edge over there. We're gonna fix that first.

So in order to sew that, we have to do the right sides together. So we're gonna lower this, but instead of matching this fold exactly with this fold under here, I want it to cover that 'cause we need a little extra on the backside. So I'm just gonna scooch it down a little bit. So I'm not exactly folding it in half. So I'm gonna scooch it down.

Let me get a pin in it and I'll show you the other side and you'll see what I mean here. Get a pin there. All right, let's turn it over and let me lie this down. Do you see how, even though this is folded in half the front side is a little bit longer. This is going to be key.

We really want to make sure that it is lower on that backside. So now what we're gonna do, here is our zipper, we are going to stitch a seam right alongside of that zipper right here. Move my iron and I'll show you what that looks like. Now, the easiest thing to do would be to put your zipper foot on here since you're sewing over the zipper. But all just carefully, you're sewing alongside of the zipper.

So right along the edge, do a back stitch. All right, I'll show you what that it looks like. It's hard to see such an itty bitty little bit of sewing here. All right, so here we are. Let me pull the pins out.

Clip the threads. Now you can see what we've done is we've just sewn those two pieces together right here. I am going to clip some of the bulk off of this edge right here, just to clip my corners. And now what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna flip it right side out. So I'm gonna flip this over, I'm gonna tuck all of that in.

I like to use the tip of my scissors very carefully to poke out that corner. Now, the whole point of this is, I'm gonna peek under here. See this seam right here, this is going to go just past that seam like this. When we sew it, we're gonna sew it on the front side right there and if you have it folded, past that you'll catch the inside and it'll look wonderful. And also we have a very nice finished edge right here.

Now, if you're only doing the. If you're not doing the overlapped waistband, you're gonna do the same thing on this side and then what you would do is your zipper goes up to here and you'll sew a little hook and eye to hook the two together. But we're going to do the overlap so let's take a look at that one. I'm going to flip this over. We'll move this guy out of the way.

So we're gonna do the same thing. We're gonna fold this in half, except for we wanna do the right sides together. So we're gonna flip it this way, we're going to put them together like this. Now remember, this one needs to be just a little lower so we're going to scooch it down just like that and I'm gonna get some pins in here. Now this time we don't want to pin our flaps.

I'm just gonna pin on the top. And by the flaps, I mean this little fold right here. We do not want to pin that and I will show you in a moment why that's important. Okay, there's our pins. Once it's pinned, I want to unfold these two flaps.

So I'm gonna unfold this one. I'm gonna flip it over. Oops and I pinned my zipper a little here. Let me get that out of there. I'm gonna fold my zipper down just like this with my flap.

Now, this is super weird and awkward and it's not gonna wanna stay that way. So after I've got them both pushed down, I am going to get a pin in there to hold them in place. Just like that. All right so, let's take a look at what we've done here. This is the one side.

I'm gonna flip it over and this is the other side. You can see that this one is longer than the other. So we did get there, that's no problem. What we're gonna do now is see where we stopped the zipper seam right there. Sorry, we stopped sewing at the zipper when we were attaching our waistband.

We're gonna start sewing as close to that as humanly possible, we're gonna finish sewing out this way, so we're gonna try to sew right on that fold there. See that fold that we made when we ironed it. We're gonna sew right along that fold and then add a half an inch seam, that's about half an inch seam, then we're gonna sew up this way half an inch seam as well. Let me sew it and then I'm going to show it to you so that you can see how that works. All right.

So this is a little awkward because you have to kind of stuff your zipper under there and your zipper by the way is folded so there's lots going on. Be patient, you're the boss. Make sure you tell that fabric what to do. All right, so I'm in there. I think I'm starting right at the edge of the seam.

It's hard to get really close to it 'cause your zipper's there. So be patient with yourself. I'm just gonna get a few little stitches in here. Do a little back stitch. Sew all the way over here.

I'm gonna stop about a half an inch from the edge, maybe one more. And then I'm going to lift my work, turn and I'm gonna sew right to the edge. Sew once. Sew right to the edge and do a little back stitch. All right, let's see what that looks like.

So, let's take a look here. Here's where my original seam was and I really tried to start really close. It's a little bit awkward in there 'cause there's a lot going on. But I started right there, I sewed it and then I came over to here and I came here. So I back stitched at both ends.

I'm gonna pull my pins out. Now I'm gonna just trim some of the bulk out of this whole thing down here, because this becomes a lot of fabric when you turn this part right side out. So I'm gonna trim that up, I'm gonna remove this pin, and now I'm going to flip this whole thing inside out so get ready to wrestle. So I'm gonna push this tube into itself just like this. Now, when you're doing small tubes like these, it helps just to kind of pull from the edge, just kind of pull outward and then pull like this.

Another trick that you can do is you can use a sewing pin to kind of hook the fabric and pull it out as well, and we'll probably need to do that once. So we're right at the very end. I'm going to get my scissors in here to very carefully poke out one corner, poke out the other corner. That looks pretty good, all right. So let's get those poked out.

The zipper gets tucked inside of there and now we're going to press this nice and flat. So, now we have on the front side, a piece of our waistband that hangs way over. Now, before we can connect the two, we have to stitch this whole thing shut. So what you're gonna do is here's our seam, we have to hide it. We are going to sew on the front side right underneath that seam.

It's gonna be a real close call. So we wanna make sure that this fold is, see if I put it right there, I'm going to miss if I sew on this seam on the other side. So I wanna put it well past and I'm gonna shimmy, shimmy, shimmy all the way down just like that. And I'm gonna get a pin in there to hold it. We are going to pin this entire skirt like that all the way around.

When you get to this side, you're gonna do the same thing. Helps if you don't have threads hanging out everywhere. Make sure your zipper's tucked in there. You're gonna make sure that hides and you're going to pin it. So you're gonna pin that all the way around.

Now I'm gonna show you what the finished product looks like. What's gonna happen is on the front side, you are going to sew on the skirt as close to that waistband, as you can possibly get. Look what happens on the back. Because we folded it down past that seam when we sewed it on the front it caught it on the back, easy peasy. So we're gonna sew that all the way around.

The last step that you need to do is on your flap, use the instructions to make a button hole on whatever your machine is. It could be a one-step, a two-step, a four steps. So follow the instructions practice on a scrap, I like to do that first. You're going to make a little button hole, very carefully seam rip it open, position a button on your waistband, and then you now have a finished waistband that is overlapped and you can clip your little button in and you have added a really nice detail to your skirt. Now, if you are not doing the overlapped again, these two pieces would meet.

Just like the faced one, you would sew on a little hook and eye to keep them together. That is how you add a little bit of extra detail to your skirts. Now, there is one other, there's a couple actually other tricks I have up my sleeve to add a little bit of detail to the skirt, that is a slit and an exposed zipper and we'll talk about those in the next section.