In the Making: Denim Skirt

Ciao! Today I’ll be sharing about one of my current projects, a denim skirt.

Now, for a little backstory: I’ve been wanting to make a new denim skirt for a while now, but hadn’t purchased any fabric for it yet. We usually buy fabric at Joann’s, but since the store is a little bit of a drive for us we don’t get there very often. So, I looked into buying fabric online. Which, I was a little skeptical about since I like to see and feel fabric before buying it. I eventually discovered Fashion Fabrics Club. They had a wide selection, and with the sale that was going on at the time, good prices, too. I ended up with two yards of 100% cotton, medium/heavy, dark navy denim.

The pattern I use is Fresh Modesty’s How to Sew with Denim E-book. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a valid link to the ebook. I also used the same pattern for this skirt, and this one, too. Well, enough explanation, let’s get started!

Making a Denim Skirt: Gores

I used the formula provided in the ebook to figure out how much I needed to add to the original pattern Then, I made a master pattern so I wouldn’t have to measure for every one of the eight gores. I used a bright, non-stretchy fabric that contrasted well with the dark denim so that I would be able to easily cut out the gores.

In order to not have to hem the skirt (yay!) I cut the gores out at the edge of the fabric, in order to take advantage of the already finished edge.

After cutting out the gores, it was time to sew them together. As you can see I measured the five-eighths seam allowance, marked it with chalk, and pinned it together.

The four back gores were sewn together normally, but the front four were a little more involved. The top, middle, un-sewn space was for the fly, and the bottom two were for the godets.

Making a Denim Skirt: Godets

I was a little nervous about installing these godets. I’ve never actually done anything like them in the past. Fortunately, they weren’t as hard as I thought they might be.

I started by cutting out two of these triangles, using the pattern provided in the ebook. Then, making sure that the hem would line up, I carefully pinned the triangle into the opening for it.

It was a little interesting trying to maneuver the fabric under the foot so that I could sew in the right place. I found that it was actually simpler to start from the tip of the triangle and sew downwards (unfortunately, the photo above is from before I figured that out 😉 ), making sure to keep everything in place. I repeated the same steps on the other side.

The finished godets look like this! I was pretty happy with how smoothly they turned out. 🙂

Making a Denim Skirt: The Fly

The next step was to start installing the zipper. As you can see, I basted one side of the zipper to the fabric. Then, I trimmed the zipper to the proper length. Switching the foot on the sewing machine to a zipper foot, I sewed the basted side of the zipper together.

For the next step, I lined up and pinned the other edge of the zipper. Then sewed it up.

And then, the finished fly. It looks a little messy, since the chalk hasn’t rubbed off from when I traced for the stitching, but it’s not too terrible. 😉

That’s it for now! I hope you enjoyed this post. What are you working on now? ~ Emily