Flirting the Issue Skirt Sew-along

I heard Rachel Hauser of Stitched in Color on Pat Sloan’s radio podcast recently talking about hosting a sew along for a free skirt pattern by Anna Maria Horner. The name of the pattern is called Flirting the Issue Skirt and you can download it here.

Cotton voile fabric by Amy Butler

The skirt is very light and airy. The suggested fabric for making it is cotton voile which is definitely one of the nicest feeling fabrics you can wear! Sometimes voile is difficult to find and pricey compared to quilting weight cotton but Rachel gave a link to Pink Chalk Fabrics who has a great selection at a great price. Irresistible!

Voile is lightweight enough that it would not make a suitable skirt in one layer. This pattern uses 2 fabric layers (an outside fabric and a lining) which are sewn together at the top of the skirt. Channels for elastic are then sewn in which create the waistband. It is very easy to sew this skirt, but threading all of that elastic and making the gathers even is daunting!

4 rows of elastic inserted between the outside fabric and the lining.

I suggested to my friend Anne that we get together and each make up a skirt. I seem to get much more done if I plan a date to do it with a friend. Do you do this?

Anne’s skirt using Anna Maria Horner’s voile fabric

I have linked up at Stitched in Color where you can see the other skirts that were made during this sew along and see Rachel’s post comparing her two skirts – one made out of voile and the other made of quilting weight cotton.

Rachel’s skirts from Stitched in Color. Voile on the left. Quilting cotton on the right.

This was a fun project. The skirt is very comfortable to wear. Perfect for the warm weather ahead.

I cut the front and back such that I could match those circles at the sides. It is very difficult to see the side seam which looks nice – but took extra time!

Other info for this garment (in case I decide to make another).

I used 1.5 yards of an Amy Butler voile for the outer skirt and 1.5 yards of cotton batiste for the lining. These 2 fabrics were perfect for this skirt. Unfortunately the only local source for batiste had very few colors options which is how I ended up with yellow.

The elastic I used was 1/4″ and was called “knit” elastic. The other option at Joann’s was “braided” elastic. The only difference I could see from descriptions on the packaging was that the braided variety narrows when stretched and the knit does not. I’m not sure the relevance of that to this project, but I decided to chose the one that did not narrow when stretched.

The 4 rows of elastic is very comfortable at the waist. I cut each piece of elastic the measurement of my waist, inserted it into the skirt, pulled and twisted and tried to get the gathers evenly distributed, tried it on and then cut off probably at least 3 inches from each end before joining them together. The finished waist is, in fact, about 6″ less than my waist measurement, but this elastic is so stretchy that it does not feel at all tight.

Who doesn’t LOVE a hem (or two) that can be finished by machine? Very quick and easy finish as the skirt pieces are exact rectangles and everything, including the hem, is right on grain. I did use the suggested pattern advice of making both the front and back the circumference of my waist. It appears as though some of the other sewists participating in the sew along thought their skirt may have benefitted by less width if they used a heavier fabric.

Anne and I both chose fabrics with a semi-large motif that we thought would look better matched at the side seams. An all over print would have eliminated having to fuss with that.