A hand-sewn alteration

Hello again! Today I have another skirt project to share with you.

Here we have the skirt I altered. (Unfortunately, I forgot to take a “before” picture until I had already cut the skirt and started to gather the top. You can still see what the skirt previously looked like, I hope, in the one I did take.)

I’ve done several alterations as a result of a skirt being an awkward length, or too tight at the top. All they need, in most cases, is to be cut a few inches below the waistband and re-made into a skirt at the new length. That’s exactly what I did with this skirt. I didn’t like it as it was, what with the weird length, tight fit, and the zipper being in the front. So I decided I’d chop it up and make a different skirt!

How I did it:

My first course of action was to cut the skirt just below the back pockets. Then I hand-sewed, in loose stitching, all along what was now the top of the skirt. This made it easy to pull the thread and gather the top. Then, I cut the waistband off of what was formerly the top of the skirt, and attached it to what I had now. I secured it with pins.

For the next step, I hand sewed the waistband to the top of the skirt. It was a little tricky (and tedious) trying to get the needle through such thick denim (I may have stabbed my finger a couple of times…). But, I knew that our sewing machine would never make it through, either.

Due to a slight miscalculation when I was gathering the top of the skirt, the original button and buttonhole no longer matched up. It wasn’t too much of a problem, however.

I didn’t try to solve the waistband problem, though, until after I had installed the zipper. I ripped the zipper out of the original top of the skirt, and reinstalled it into the side of the new skirt. It was pretty simple, cut a slit in the side for it, pin the zipper into position and hand sew it into place. I had thought about not installing a zipper and simply pulling the skirt over my head to wear it. But, in the interest of ease-of-wear, I used a zipper instead.

In order to eliminate the gaping waistband where the button should have been, I installed another button and loop on the other side to hold it closed. Then, after stitching down the belt loops, I was done!

What do you think? Have you ever altered a skirt? ~ Emily