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Sewing Skirt to Yoke

Lesson 9 from: How to Sew Your First Skirt and Understand Patterns

Shaerie Mead

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Lesson Info

9. Sewing Skirt to Yoke

Lesson Info

Sewing Skirt to Yoke

So now we're ready to so our skirt to our yoke right along the road that we've created by these gathering threads, so I'm going to start out lying up on my seem allowance for this pattern because this step step number five doesn't tell us where to line the edge of our fabrica that actually means that you want to default to the seam allowance for this pattern. So in your instructions and also on the pattern pieces, sometimes on the back of the envelope, it tells you what the seam allowance for this particular project is in this case, the seam allowance is five eighths of an inch or one point five centimeters, so the first thing I'm going to do is take my tape and put that right on my one point five centimeters line and to sew a permanent stitch, I'm going to change my stitch length from my longest stitch that was used for the gathering stitch back down to around two point five for my permanent stitch this time, I'm also going to do a back stitch at the beginning and at the end, because ...

I don't want this to come apart, so I'm gonna line up my needle right close to the edge of my fabric, and I'm gonna line my fabric top edge up against my fifteen line my blue tape. The first thing I'm going to do is a little back stitch, so also forward first, and then hold down my back stitch button to go backwards a few stitches, and then before I get to this figure eight that I've looped around my pin, what I want to do is undo the pin and separate those threads, so they're on either side of the needle. I don't really want to, so over that lump of thread, if you did so over you, just have to use your seam ripper to pull it out it's best to avoid sitting over it, so pull those threads off to the side, and now what I'm going to dio has so carefully down to my first pin, you don't really want to so over pins because that's a great way to break your needle or break your pin, so I'm gonna take the pen out on, but I'm gonna keep sewing. I'm looking at a couple of things while I'm doing this, I'm trying to keep the edge of my fabric nice and even along my tape, which is on the five eighths or one point five centimeter murder, I'm also trying to stay as close as I can down the middle of those two gathering stitches, trying not to so over pins, taking those pins out as I get to him. You also want to be really careful of this underneath fabric, this yoke fabric, it really does want to pull up and get stuck in the scene that you're sewing, so every once in a while, move the bulk of the fabric unto your table and take your hand and reach underneath and smooth that fabric out of the way. If you feel like you might have sown over a lump, just keep going, because you can fix it. In the end, having all these pins makes you slow down a little bit and that's a good thing when you're sewing on gathers from one end to the other, I'm getting close to my second figure eight anchor, I'm going so pretty close to it, and then, just like in the beginning, I'm going to take the pen out, separate those two threads off to the side, so right up to the edge of my fabric do a little bit, and now we can see the permanent stitching down the center of my temporary stitching, the basting stitches that will get pulled out. So now we're ready to get rid of these basting stitches, these air temporary stitches, and we don't need them now that we've sown a permanent stitch that holds our skirt to the yoke to remove these, find the center of your skirt, where there's two notches are and use your scissors or your seam ripper to cut the stitches through the layer of threads that you were pulling on that's the wrong side of the skirt here, then all you need to d'oh is grab the thread you were pulling on and continue to pull on it a little bit to pull it right out of the fabric just like that same thing on the bottom. The top ones don't matter so much because they're within your seem allowance, and they won't be seen when you're finished with the skirt, but that bottom when you really want to get out of there, because right now you can see it on the right side of the skirt, so I'm gonna pull those back threads out, and then the long threads that are on the front, we'll just pull right off. The next thing we're going to do is finished the edge with his exact stitch, so you want to set your sewing machine up for your regular zigzag? I'd like a medium with so sometime somewhere around the three mark, and this stitch is going to be sown at the one centimeter mark for most machines with his exact there's no need to do a back stitch, and basically you just want to get it within the seam allowance as close to that line of permanent stitching as you can. We're gonna trim off some of this extra fabric things like with the straight stitching. You want to be really careful that this bottom fabric of the yolk doesn't get caught up into this stitching, so every once in a while smooth it out of the way, and I'm gonna trim off all those extra threads from where I started and stopped sewing. I'm going to trim off the extra fabric that's on the outside edge of my zigzag stitch with my little scissors here, you can get pretty close to the zigzags, the reason we do this exact stitches because our fabric is woven and it will fray, and the zigzags keep the fabric from fraying, so it makes it neater on the inside of our government, and it makes it a lot stronger. So all of this is going to get trimmed off, and then I'm going to do a quick press to make this look fantastic. This is one reason why an iron and an ironing board are pretty essentials tools for sewing, even if your stitches are a little bit wobbly, a good press is going to make them look super straight, so I'm going to smooth this out now and open it up this is what it looks like when we're finished, and I'm going to take a minute to smooth this out, it's going to naturally point so that the seam allowances pointing up towards the yolk that's just because of this fabric is heavier and it pushes it in that direction. To press this, I'm going to use the iron toe, hold the fabric in place, and then I'm gonna pull on this a little bit to make it tight, and I'm going to smooth the edge of my iron right over the edge of where my gathering stitches are. I don't want to press down here too much because I don't want to flatten out those gathers. I like them just the way they are, but I do want to press this edge of the yolk so that it's nice and flat like this, so I have my iron on my yoke to hold it in place, and I'm gonna pull on this a little bit and I'll slide my iron down so you get the edge of the iron right on the edge of the yolk to give that a nice, smooth crease if you get a little bit onto the gathers that's, okay, but you don't want to put your iron down here anywhere, so that makes it nice and smooth, very professional, and we're ready to do the other half of our skirt.

Class Materials

Bonus with Purchase

Shaerie Mead - Easiest Skirt Pattern.pdf
Shaerie Mead - Easiest Skirt Supply List.pdf

Ratings and Reviews

Diane
 

The course was as clean and precise as her sewing. I haven't sewn for some time, but the techniques Shaerie taught will serve me well. Thanks~

Jude
 

Shaerie is an exceptionally clear and focused teacher. She points out essential steps for beginner sewers and doesn't get caught up with extraneous details.

Melissa Fritzsche
 

Wondering if there's any way to still get this pattern. Thanks!

Student Work

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