Simplicity 2413

Okay, already onto my next project!  View A, tulip skirt style is up next.

Making the muslin trial of this skirt, I realised it was pretty simple, but if not done just right, it would look really home-made.  For instance I will get a tracing wheel and paper to get the pleats exact so it doesn't look unbalanced.  And I need to pay attention to pinning and sewing the pleats as you'll notice below the front pleats should be facing outwards not inwards (oops!).  I haven't got my material yet for this skirt so the project is on hold for now; I'm hoping to find something great at the Knitting and Stitching fair in a few weeks time.

 

After posting the above, I could see it wasn't just the direction the pleats faced that was the only thing wrong.  Now, I'm not sure if I was being a numpty, but I just couldn't get how I should be folding them.  It took me quite some time to figure it out too!  So for all of you who are also struggling with this, here's some help:

On each side of the centre, fold on the 2nd dotted line and bring to the first dotted line.  Next fold on the 4th line and bring to the 3rd, and so-on.  Wrong side should then look like this:

Front skirt wrong side view

Flipping that over it will look like this (better than the muslin look right?!):

Front skirt view

Update - 28/10/2010

Yes, I got stuck again, hence the reason why it's taken me sooooo long to finish this project.  This skirt has pockets built into the side seams, and I've been perplexed about how to insert the zipper into the side seam as well as having the pocket there.  Wouldn't the pocket be unusable if the zip was closed??   Anyhow, the pattern instructions were absolutely terrible at this point which meant I had to figure it out myself.  I admit, I gave up. I left the pocket out and just sewed in the zipper.  There, skirt finished, job done.

If only! I had to solve it so my mind could rest.  So, after a lot of pinning, unpinning, pinning again, still with no luck, I went onto the web and finally came across a forum question in PR where another confused sewer had this same problem (at least I'm not the only one!).  The forum response directed me to a blog where a picture made it all go "click" in my brain - yay!

So to help any fellow sewers out there struggling to understand as well, here is how I did it:

Sew the pocket pieces right sides together. 

Attach the front part of the pocket to the front of the skirt in the normal way. 

Attach the invisible zipper to the back piece of the skirt normally also - ie. the pocket does not get sewn onto the back of the skirt at all. 

Then, the front of the zipper attaches to the back of the pocket and to the front part of skirt above pocket top.  Difficult to explain but I hope the pictures have helped.

And now the final product...

I do love this skirt, I wore it out to dinner in London and it was a hit :)  I will definitely make it again and next time with no dramas at all!