Peasant Skirt

The peasant skirt, with the shirred elastic waistband is back. Strangely enough, this is a fashion The Girl seems to like. Whether she likes her mother's creative efforts or not is another matter.

The skirt still needs to be hemmed, but obviously that will have to wait til The Girl gets home from school 'cause not everyone got the day off today :-) I didn't use a pattern. I sewed two widths of fabric together and seamed into a tube, gathered the top back to a single width, put a wide waist band on, then added about 5 layers of shirring elastic.

I've never worked successfully with shirring elastic before. I think the difference this time is a couching foot I bought some time ago.

I don't use it very often, but its very handy for what it does. I bought after spending a day doing "arty" quilting with a friend, including couching wool threads to the background. She couched hers without any effort at all, while I muttered and mumbled and unpicked a lot. At the time, The Man did think that $40 for a single fancy foot was a bit much, but maybe now I've made a $30 skirt for basically nothing, he'll appreciate its worth :-)


The ribbon, or elastic, or wool, or whatever, goes through the ring at the front, then through the hole in front of the needle and under the foot to the back.

You can sew ribbon with a straight stitch down the middle, or couch finer threads with a zigzag. I guess if you're keen you could set the needle to the edge of the ribbon and sew one edge down, then sew the other edge with a zipper foot or similar.