Hello dear reader! I hope you’ve landed upon this post in hopes of seeing how I created my adorable Pirate Cats skirt, because that is exactly what I’m about to discuss. Last week, I decided it was time to wing-it, creating this skirt with an idea in my head and no pattern to speak of. I wanted to test myself, see how well I could handle a project like this by figuring out my details as I went along.
They didn’t all go smoothly, and there are certainly aspects I would attempt to approve upon if I were to do this style again. Thus I’ll be making note of moments when what I did didn’t work the way I’d planned, hopefully saving you the potential frustration of my little mistakes!
This will be a multi-post series, because I took a carp-ton of photos for nearly every step I took on this little endeavor. I do hope it will be less than five parts, but quite honestly, I won’t know until I’m done. As such, off we go!
~>: Part 1 :<~
For this skirt project, I used the following fabrics:
Pirate Cats Striped Canvas Border Print in Petal Signature Cotton – 3 yards
Gold and Silver Fauxstorical Coins Print in Petal Signature Cotton – 1 yard
Champagne Polyester Lining Fabric – 2 yards(ish)
Disclaimer: The two Spoonflower prints are my design, and I receive a commission from any purchases of those fabrics. The lining fabric is from a fabric house I love to purchase from, and I get no kick-back from purchases made through my link here.
In the spirit of I’m-always-in-a-hurry, I used a grey thread for my straight stitch sewing machine and used the eggplant purple thread on my serger because I didn’t feel like changing it out. I barely serge seams anyway, and none of it should be visible in the end.
I started off with the Coins fabric. (Seriously, I’m not going to type out that long title every time…so henceforth it’s the Coins fabric.) I laid the fabric on my cutting table folded in half, with the selvedge edges together.
For my waistband pieces, I cut three 4-inch wide pieces from selvedge to selvedge. Because Spoonflower’s printing does not extend all the way down into the selvedges, there is a white section on each piece’s end. With the waistband style I decided to go with, there would be math and trimming of these happening later on. For now, cutting pockets comes next!
For the pockets, I took a look at the pockets on my cargo shorts (because guy’s cargo shorts actually have good pockets), took some dimensions, and sketched out this new pocket pattern piece. It’s about 9 inches tall, 6 inches wide, and I decided I needed roughly five inches for that J-shaped opening for my hands. I recommend doing more than that, because these ended up a bit tight for me to put my hands in.
I duplicated the opening shape on another piece to create a facing for the pocket opening. Small, simple, effective.
I immediately took the facing pieces to the serger to get a finish on the interior edge. Once the skirt is done, no one will ever see that edge again. Ever. No one cares about the purple thread.
Next, I stitched the facing to the opening of the pocket pieces, and then serged the edges. This really ended up being a wider seam allowance than it needed, so it’d be best to keep your seam allowance here to 3/8 inch or under.
If you do end up with a 1/2 inch or larger seam allowance here, you’ll need to either trim it down or clip your curves. By turning the facing to the inside of the pocket and pressing the seam, you’ll be able to easily identify areas that need relief by clipping the seam allowance.
After pressing the seamline to make sure the opening will be crisp when finished, I under-stitched on the facing, catching the seam allowances in my stitching. My under-stitching is somewhere between 1/8-inch and 1/4-inch away from the seamline. This helps the facing piece stay to the inside of the pocket and keep the pocket opening stable.
The facing is fully pressed to the interior of the pocket pieces. Mine ended up a little wobbly, but that’s okay. I love having pockets, but I’ve always hated making them. I’ve avoided making them for years after trying to make welt pockets. Don’t start making pockets with welt pockets. This style is far easier, and may help you love to put pockets on things.
Pockets from the outside! Yay!
Threads everywhere! Zomg! …no one cares. Srsly.
And so these get set aside for the next steps:
Cutting the main skirt!!
Continued in Part 2
[…] This is a continuation from part one. […]