Skirt Restorations

So, when my body shape changed, I gave away a lot of the things I'd sewn, but I did keep a few skirts that I eventually attached to bodices

Strawberries / Spiderwebs / Forest eyes

And then today I converted them back to skirts 

This is actually the nth incarnation of this one--it started as a dress, ripped at a weird arm opening area, got repaired, ripped again, got converted to a skirt (with the lower part of the original bodice becoming the waistband and maintaining the side zipper), got sewn into a different dress, and once again is a skirt, this time with an elastic waist

 

I made the opening for inserting the elastic by leaving an unstitched area on the inside of the waistband seam.  It was very annoying to insert the elastic through that size opening.

(I had been outside patting the neighbor cat with long white hair, so there is long white cat hair alllll over this now)

I did the waistband my more or less usual way, by pressing the unsewn strip of fabric in half lengthwise, then pressing under one edge 5/8".  Then I unfolded and sewed the ends, then sewed the unpressed edge to the inside of the upper edge before flipping the pressed folded edge around to the front, encasing the seam allowances.  Finally, I edge stitched from the outside along that pressed edge.

Oh, and, I had cut the skirt off of the bodice with the serging intact, which meant I did not have to re-gather the skirt to the waistband.  I did have to gently compress the gathers a bit, but it was a lot less hassle than regathering the whole edge.

Since the bodice this had been attached to was a slightly heavier fabric, I decided to baste the gathers in place before cutting the skirt away from the serging.  I again slightly compressed things to get the existing gathers to fit to the waistband, which I prepared and applied the same way as the previous skirt.

The difference here is that I sewed the waistband side seam solid, and left a gap when I edge stitched the waistband, and inserted the elastic through there.  The gap I left was narrow and annoying to work with.  Then I edge stitched the opening closed.

The fabric I used for all of these waist bands is the same polycotton blend I used for the bias binding, and some of the lining, in the waist cinchers I worked through recently.

This final skirt isn't as wide at the upper tier as the other two, so there was no need to maintain any gathers to get it to fit the waistband, although I did need to, once again, compress the skirt slightly to make it fit.

This time, I left a gap of a few inches for the elastic insertion, and it was not annoying at all.  But I did mis-stitch when i was closing that gap.  You know the refrain: It's Fine.

So I have restored some summery skirt variety, even though it's been so incredibly hot lately that I'm back to wearing only tunic dresses for their pure easy-breeziness...which might make you ask why, then, did I do this at all when I would have worn the dresses they'd been? Ah, that's the key: I was not, in fact, wearing those dresses, and the only reason I had not given them away was because I was saving them for their skirts.  So here we are.

...although now I have no idea what I'm going to do with the oddly-fitting bodices they'd been attached to...