Sewing project progress: full gathered skirt in red dupioni, part IV

Thanks to captainecchi*, I think I've figured out what I did wrong on the skirt. I put the skirt up INSIDE the two halves of the waistband (it's sewed on three sides only, making a little pocket) and attached it to the muslin interfacing in there. I think when I heard the bit about flipping it down, I thought that turning both sides of the "pocket" down would better encase the top of the skirt, so that seemed like the right thing to do. If I understand this properly, it seems the actual thing to do would have been to lay the whole waistband on top of the skirt piece, right side of the interfaced piece of the band to the right side of the skirt, and sewed them together with the seam inside the pocket. Then you just roll up the bottom edge and sew it down with an invisible stitch.

I think my method would have worked if I hadn't turned the waistband piece right side out. If I'd done exactly what I did, sewing the skirt to the muslin, with the piece wrong side out, then flipped it, then I think it would have worked fine. The top seam would have been hidden, and I kind of like the way the band encases the top, so if I ever make such a thing again, maybe I'll try that and see if it does indeed work as nicely as I think it would.

Well, I had to work with where I was, and it wasn't hard to fix the damage I'd done-- Just needed to add in an extra row of stitches. More work, I guess, but whatever. I went about hiding that exposed waistband top seam first by pinning it down to the back side. I didn't want the stitches to show through on the outer side of the waistband, so I thought maybe I should use a blind stitch becase they're relatively simple invisible stitches. They're made by slipping your needle through only one or two threads of the weave of the fabric you don't want to show through, and then through the piece you want to join to it. But I realized that all I hand to do was make sure I sewed it only to the muslin layer and not to the silk layer and nothing would show. I practiced the blind stitch anyway, as I think that's what I'll be using on the hem. I kept feeling like the single thread I was putting my needle your wasn't going to be strong enough to hold the seam in place, but apparently a row of that kind of stitch is strong enough. It was relatively easy on the muslin (though I couldn't check the back of it to see how invisible my stitches actually were) but I think it'll be tougher on the silk. That was easy, and the new kind of hand stitch was fun.

Then I went down to the bottom edge of the waistband. I had pinned it so that there was a tiny bit of the edge of the fabric rolled under itself, and I realized I only wanted to sew through that rolled-under part and attach it to the skirt body so that the stitch didn't go through the layer of the waistband that was visible. That was tough; I often pierced the top layer of the very thin silk, and while I managed to eventually sew everything down without much visible stitching, I left a lot of ugly needlemarks. They, and the marks from the pins, mostly came out with pressing, but I can still see them up close.

Here is the result of all that.

Looks pretty good, eh? The waistband looks relatively smooth and unmarked, and measured about 5cm all the way across. I really was careful to keep it even. So even with a mistake, I figured out more of less what I'd done wrong, figured out a simple way to fix it, and even think I determined how to make the method I did use work. Yay! I'm learning!

Next up: figuring out how to put in an invisible zipper without a sewing machine. Woohoo!