Skirting the Issue: LiEr from ikatbag

Hello friends! This is LiEr from ikatbag and I am excited to be part of Skirting the Issue. Today I am sharing links to some skirt tutorials on my blog, and showing you how to make a very simple wrap skirt out of a single piece of fabric. All of these skirts, save one (the fitted panel skirt), don't require zippers.

First up is the Summer Skirts Series from 2009, consisting of tutorials to make six basic skirts. If you are a regular reader of my blog, you'll probably know that I very, very rarely share tutorials to make specific-design garments, preferring instead to outline the conceptual construction of these garments, so that people can use that knowledge to design their own outfits. This series covered six designs common in girls' skirts:

Top row: Classic Gathered Skirt, Tiered Skirt

Middle row: Gathered Panel Skirt, Fitted Panel Skirt

Bottom Row: Circular Skirt, Wrap Skirt

(click on the individual photos to take you to the specific tutorials)

At the end of the series, I drew out a cheat sheet to calculate and draft these six skirts to your child's (or your own) measurements:

As an epilogue to that series, I wrote a tutorial on making gathered skorts, because my girls were at the age of immodest playground-sliding, aggressive jungle-gym-climbing and spontaneous cartwheeling in public places.


Then, because my girls continued to love wearing skirts, but wanted them in fabrics other than regular cotton, I diversified to


a pleated plaid skirt:

a knit tiered skirt:

and a knit A-line skirt (which was for me, but it works for the girls, too):

And to reassure you that even children can make skirts, here is a two-layered gathered skirt my eldest made -with some help -when she was five years old:


Once you have a basic skirt design, there is no limit to the number of ways to personalize it. Here are three links to resources on my blog I hope you will find useful:

1 Another tutorial series on 26 different pockets:


2 A tutorial on smooth knit waistbands:

3 A tutorial on hem facings:

And now, on to today's tutorial- a saree-inspired wrap skirt!

First, let me say that I have always loved ethnic fabrics, designs and outfits. I love them so much that I have an entire closet full of traditional ethnic outfits including sarees, aodais, indonesian and malaccan baju kurongs and sarong kebayas, indian kurtas and qipaos. I wore them to school when I was a high school Physics teacher because I thought it was both absolutely cooler-than-regular-clothes and absolutely fabulous to celebrate the cultural identities (fashionwise, at least) of the kids in our multi-cultural classrooms. So today, I thought I'd show you how to work with saree fabric to make a modern version of that iconic and beautiful Indian skirt.

I picked this skirt for various reasons, apart from it being Asian-inspired, I mean. I'm guessing that, because of the ease of fit, the majority of the patterns and actual donated skirts in Skirting The Issue will probably be for children. So I'm making one for the teens, especially teens who might want to dress up a little for a day at the mall or the beach. Second, it's versatile -this is a dressy skirt if made in this fabric but it can also be a casual skirt if made in linen or something cottony and less shiny. Third, there are no zippers or elastic but it is still incredibly adjustable to a wide range of waists and hips. I made this skirt to fit a 26"waist but look - it still works, wrapped around my much-wider one!

You will need a yard and a half (or one and a half times your hip circumference) of saree fabric. I bought mine from Joann. Some tips for working with brocade/saree fabric:

• Use a sharp, fine needle because the weave is tight and often in two layers (to achieve the dual tone)
• Pull the fabric taut under the presser foot (i.e. from the front and the back) as you sew, to prevent runs in the fabric.
• Give yourself wider seam allowances than usual, because this fabric frays copiously. You can trim off fraying bits and still have a decent seam allowance to work with if you started out with wider ones in the first place.
• Press gently on the seams and avoid pulling them apart to get them to open - the fabric could rip.

Saree fabric comes with brocade motifs throughout,

and one or two brocade borders along the selvedges. 

You could use the whole width to make a maxi skirt like this

but I cut this piece of fabric into two to make two identical knee-length skirts, each with one border for its hem. I also cut a strip from the middle portion to make a sash for one skirt, and another strip from the side for the sash for the second skirt.

Start with a rectangular piece of fabric whose

• length is about 1.5 times the wearer's hip circumference
• width is the desired length of skirt plus about an inch for the waistband hem.

Follow this plan (click on it to take you to the download site), dividing the rectangle into three approximately-equal sections 

and making 8 darts: 

• 6 waist darts
• 1 regular side dart (in lieu of a side seam) and 
• 1 modified side dart with a slit opening.

Here are some step-by-step photos to show you how to make that modified dart-with-a-slit in the side seam:

Step 1:

Sew the top 1.5" of the dart, backstitching at both ends (black arrow on top)

Leave the next 1.5" of the dart unsewn (red arrow)

Sew closed the remainder of the dart (bottom black arrow), backstitching both ends.

Step 2

Make a cut through the dart about 1" below the bottom of the opening.

Step 3

Cut open the portion of the dart above that snip.

Step 4

Press open both halves of that cut dart.

Tuck in the raw edges of the closed dart (the portion below the snip) and top-stitch the opening closed (orange arrow).

Tuck in the bottom edges of the open dart and press (black arrows).

Step 5

Tuck in the sides of the open dart 

and top-stitch those sides (and the folded bottom edges) down. You now have a slit in the side seam for  the sash.

When all the darts are sewn, the rectangle will have curved to fit the contours of the wearer's body.

Now make the sash. Make two straps the way you usually do, both with one completed end (this can be pointy, rounded or just straight) and one unfinished end. One strap should be about 12" long and the other should be the wearer's waist circumference plus about 8" or more for tying. Mine were about 12" and 40" long. 

On the W.S. of the skirt, attach the short strap to the leftmost edge (the one nearer the slit) so that the unfinished end of the strap is 0.75" from the top edge and 0.25" from the left edge. Stitch it down, close to the end of the strap.

Do the same for the longer strap, attaching it to the right edge of the W.S. of the skirt. 

Now finish the side hems. Fold in 1/4" to the W.S. of the fabric

and then another 3/8" and stitch that hem down. Repeat for the other side edge of the skirt.

Now finish the waistband. 

First fold the strap back over the side hem so the strap sticks out of the side of the skirt. Stitch that fold down.

Next, fold the waistband over (see next picture for details) -

first 1/4", then 3/8", just like the side hems. Stitch that down.

The skirt is finished!

Here's how to wear this skirt-

Wrap it around your waist so the panel with the long strap is in front. Thread the strap/sash through the slit in the side, from the WS out.

Wrap the sash around your back to the other side of your waist

to meet the short strap. Tie both straps together.