Black Skirt - Burda 1/11, #105


A Good Progress and Some More Fun

Between last night and today, I've made good progress on the skirt.  I think I would have finished it today, but I chose instead to play in the snow with my son (see Parting Shot).  I had just as much fun and in 10 years, neither us will probably remember the black skirt, but we will remember the fun we had in the snow.

The skirt is pretty easy to make, but I thought I would show you some of the details of preparing and attaching the skirt front and backs to the respective yoke pieces.  I personally find that Burda skimps on some of the details for this sort of thing, which may or may not lead to problems with the finished garment.  First, let's look at preparing the skirt pieces.  Burda does instruct you to interface the bottom of the "v", which is good.  It is not in the main steps, so read every bit of the instructions carefully. 

Notice the stuffed ziplock bag.  I save small scraps of interfacing for jobs such as this and store it right by the ironing board.  You only need a small square and usually there are small bits leftover from cutting out something else.  I had my choice of four different kinds of black interfacing, and settled on a nice lightweight woven. 

Once the skirt pieces are interfaced and marked, Burda has you slash down the center front to the marking where the bottom of the "v" is.  That's fine, but I prefer to staystitch anything I'm going to clip into.  This isn't hard to do.  If you've marked the center front line, measure 5/8" on either side of the line and mark that point.  Now, using a ruler, connect the point of the "v" and the 5/8" mark; do this on both sides.  You will have a very long, skinny "v" shape.  Stay stitch along the marked line, taking one stitch across the point; this is also your stitching line when attaching the yoke.  Then, clip down to the bottom of the "v". 

Now the yoke can be attached.  As you can see from the photo below, I've also marked the seam lines on the yoke piece and where they intersect. 

Where they intersect is at the bottom of the "v" on the skirt.  With the yoke on the bottom and the skirt piece on top, I pin the point where the pieces intersect first, and then out to the side seam. Then I stitch them together.  You will notice that at the side seams you will have a 5/8" seam allowance, but as you travel toward the center the seam allowance will get very narrow.  Just align the stay stitching - also the seam line - to be 5/8" from the cut edge of the yoke and stitch right on that line.  This is another benefit of putting that stay stitching in!

I pressed my seams up toward the yoke, carefully folding at the point, whereas Burda has you press them down and topstitch the skirt.  I want the seams hidden when I put in the yoke lining for a neater inside, so I chose to press them up and skip the top stitching.

Other than, the skirt is business as usual, with side seams and an invisible zipper install in the left side seam.  I did end up using the serger to finish the seams for this fabric, it shredded a bit more than other faux suede that I've used in the past.  I'll probably have to use it for the hem, too.

All that's left is the yoke facing and hem!

Parting Shot:  Snow Fun!  Since we have snow, we might as well enjoy it.  My son and I went sledding this afternoon.  Here I am, just starting to go down to the bottom.  The second photo is me on the way back up.  The snow was pretty deep, and I was sinking as deep as my thighs in some places in the beginning before we packed out the trail back up to the top.