Sewing a Denim Skirt: The Waistband

Hello! Today on “Sewing a Denim Skirt”, I’ll be showing how I altered the waistband to make it work for my skirt. Oh, and if you’re wondering why the waistband had to be altered, take a look at this post. Let’s get started!

The first thing I did in the alteration process was a little math. I had to calculate the size of the fabric I should add to the waistband, taking into account seam allowances, etc. It ended up being the size of the little almost square you can see pictured.

Here you can see the idea of what I did. The waistband edges are barely overlapped, and I used a zig zag stitch to bring it all together.

In these two photos you can see the stitching finished. I used a dark thread on the side that would actually be showing inside the skirt. It blended in pretty well, but that didn’t really matter considering what I had to do a little later.

I repeated the same process of adding material on the interfacing pieces.

After that I discovered that my fusible interfacing wouldn’t fuse to the denim. There was probably something I could have done to fix it, but I didn’t want to haggle. I instead just stitched the two layers together. It worked really well. (At least, after I switched to a denim needle. 😉 )

And here’s what that looked like. You can also see why using a thread that blended in didn’t matter on that waistband piece anymore. Red doesn’t really disappear in blue denim. 😉

Next, instead of using twill tape, I just used some regular ribbon, folded in half. This is probably not a pro tip, but hey, it works!

Sewing a Denim Skirt: The Finished Waistband

Here’s what the finished waistband looked like from the inside…

And here’s what it looks like from the outside. I’d say no one would be the wiser, just looking at the outside, about the finagling I had to do with the waistband. I’d call that a success!

That’s all for now! Next week I’m planning on finishing up this little series with a post about the installation of the zipper and hemming. Until next time ~ Emily