Sewingplums

Thinking of sewing a skirt as an ‘advanced beginner’ project ?
Or looking for help with constructing your own 6-gore skirt pattern ?

Good sewalongs are a wonderful source of confidence and useful information.
Of course it can be extra fun if you sew along at the time of issue, but they remain a useful source of information later.

There’s a big selection for skirts – so many I doubt I’ve found them all.
I’ve tried to group them according to style elements and difficulty.

These are sewalongs with detailed step by step instructions which supplement the pattern.
I haven’t included sewalongs which are mainly encouraging chat. There are many of those at Pattern Review and Sawyer-Brook.

And this got so long I’ve divided it in parts.
Some people like written tutorials with photos. Those are free.
Some people like video demos. Those are pay-for.
Some people are strongly one way or the other. Personally I like both, video to be sure what to do, written so I haven’t got to remember.

This post lists free on-line written tutorials with photos.
Here’s a post with links to skirt sewalongs with video demos (not free).

I haven’t read through, let alone worked through, all of these. So no guarantee of quality, ease of understanding, completeness. . .

Photos are not all equal. I have a commercial pattern with the garment sewn in heavily patterned fabric that looks the same on front and back sides, with stitching in closely matched thread. Impossible to see anything at all. I don’t think any of these sewalongs fall in that trap.

All include zips unless otherwise mentioned.

– – –

Beginner wrap skirt with waistband and ties

Tilly and the Buttons Miette skirt
wrap skirt with waistband and ties, no zip or buttonholes

download pattern and sewalong

Or here’s a ‘draft it yourself’ sew along for a wrap skirt from Sew Mama Sew.
A bit difficult for most complete beginners.

–

Gathers
No bought pattern needed, and no zips, but these are not easy techniques for complete beginners.

Tilly and the Buttons skirt gathered to waistband, with front button opening, pockets

sewalong

Tilly and the Buttons skirt with shirred waist

sewalong

Draft your own pattern for contoured waistband and skirt gathered by shirring

sewalong from Sew Mama Sew

–

Pencil, a-line, gored skirts

Similar instructions apply to many other styles which just vary in number of seams and shape of pattern pieces, such as gored, flared, tulip, trumpet shapes.

Basic pencil skirt using any pattern,
such as McCalll’s 3830 classic tissue pattern.

sewalong from Tuppence Ha’penny

Burda Syle Jenny skirt with wide waistband

download pattern
sewalong from A Fashionable Stitch

Colette Patterns Ginger skirt, a-line with shaped waistband

tissue pattern
sewalong from A Fashionable Stitch

Sewaholic Hollyburn skirt, 4-gores and pockets

tissue pattern
sewalong from My Messings

–

Contour waistband or yoke with fullness below

Simplicity 2226

tissue pattern
links to all the sewalong steps at the top of this post from Noodlehead

Sewaholic Crescent skirt

tissue pattern
for sewalong scroll to 2/3 down this page from Sewaholic

Burda 7342 flared bias skirt with lined yoke

tissue pattern
supplement to instructions, from Fashion Sewing Blog

–

Pleats

BurdaStyle Marie skirt

download pattern
scroll to 2/3 down the page for links to the sewalong steps from Stitch in my Side

Butterick 5756

tissue pattern
supplement to instructions, from Fashion Sewing Blog

Simplicity 2117

tissue pattern
supplement to instructions, from Fashion Sewing Blog

–

Other

Jennifer Stern Ribbon bias skirt with central seam.
The image isn’t clear, so here’s the Collete Ginger skirt in a bias version.

Jennifer Stern’s tissue pattern and tutorial (half way down), with advice about sewing on the bias.

Draft your own pattern for a circle skirt

pattern drafting and sew along from Elegant Musings

– – –

With many thanks to all the people who have done all the work of preparing these sewalongs.

A few comments on how to choose between the possibilities in my second post, on video demos.

Do you like this sort of extra sewing guidance 😀

I hope you’re pleased with what you make.
If not – what did you learn from the process, about sewing and about your preferences 😀

– – –

Patterns and links available July 2013

= = =

Explore posts in the same categories: learning to sew

This entry was posted on July 20, 2013 at 8:25 am and is filed under learning to sew. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.