How To Make a Patchwork Skirt

[Music] hello friends how do you hear from rain country god is good all the time well today I wanted to get started on showing you how I make the patchwork skirt kind of the frontier style one like I did in this video right up here it takes me about 3 to 5 hours depending on how long if it's 1/4 here or a three-tier skirt that's total time start to finish cutting the fabric and everything I work my skirts in 10 inch squares and you can see here I have some fabric laid out and this particular fabric right here is I got I picked up at a garage sale and it was a tablecloth and I just really liked the colors and the plaid I thought was kind of neat so what I'm doing is working off of that I'm using this red this lighter blue plaid and I'm going to use another set of the plus and then the dark blue and then the last color I'm going to use is this pale yellow that I think will go very nicely with that so I already have the other colors cut out so I figure I'll show you how I do this now when you're working with a good 100 percent cotton it's super easy to cut out your squares now the using the 10 inch squares I have found makes a good a pretty good one size fits most type skirt so what I start with is a 10 inch strip so I'm going to cut this strip that's a 10 inch mark and then I'm just going to rip it straight that's why I was going to say when you're using a good 100 percent cotton that usually works the best for just being able to tear it's very quick it tears clean and straight and then I usually fold the strip in half and so from there I'm going to measure out another 10 inch put a snip okay there's one there's two squares there so I'm going to get two more out of this strip so I need a total in this color of seven I'm going to make a three-tier skirt so I'm going to need a total of seven of each color and then 14 of the plaid of the tablecloth club because I'm going to be using it twice if you're making a four-tier skirt you're going to want and say you have six different pieces of fabric you're going to want 15 squares of each color okay so I cut another success snip and I'm going to continue this I think I need I need to get two more strips total well no one wants to do it because I got four only need seven so one more strip ten inch strip okay and I don't need that anymore though so yeah if you're using six different colors for the three-tier skirt in a 10-inch square you're going to need seven squares of each color for it to come out right and then if you're if you're using let's say this like with the plaid I'm using not plaid twice in the pattern so I'm going to need 14 of each and I've had skirt where I've used two of the of the you know like a print and then a solid so I needed 14 of each of those so you can do this with as little as three different colors and have it come out nice and I'll show you picture of a three color skirt here or you can do a four color skirt like the one I'm going to show you right here and here's the picture of the five fabric skirts right here you can see I start right here I have this laid out in a certain order I'm going to pick one out of each and stack them on top of each other and this is going to become my top tier others out there's the first three four five six so how this works is there's six squares in the top tier now I'm going to set those aside then on my second tier remember this is going to be the three tier skirt I'm going to start to over because I don't want to start with the same one that the other one started with because otherwise I'm going to have a too much of a repeating pattern all the way down so the next tier is twice as long as the top as the tier before it it's going to be that way no matter how many tiers you do so I'm going to need 12 so I'm starting from the third square over and then I'm going to go all the way down and this right here will be six and so I'm going to repeat that until I have 12 and then that's going to be my second tier so I won't do all that right now I'll do that in a minute then in a third tier I'm going to start another two over which means I'm going to start with this navy blue and then one two three four five six and I'm going to do that four times so that I have 24 squares in that one and then if it's a fourth here what happens is I come back on the fourth here and start with the very beginning color and do that until I have 48 squares total that's the fourth tier now if you're wanting again this this is a pretty much one size fits most so but it goes up to about 55 inch hips now if you need it to be a little bit bigger than that simply make your top tier make it in rectangles because you know if you're really tall you may even want to make it in squares of 11 inches or 10 and a half inches just depending on how much more you want to add to that top the rest of it can still stay ten inch squares or eleven inch squares or whatever however it is you want to do it but the top can be rectangles and I've done this before for people just to give them a little bit more room on top but then the rest will balance out the same so I'm going to get two I'm going to finish out making this second tier layer and then I'm going to take you over the sewing machine I'd like to show you how I put them degrees I'm ready to start putting my squares together and so I'm going to show you what I do when I go over a few things here and I already made sure that I had several bobbins wound up in the color that I'm going to use I like to do that ahead of time because when you're making a skirt you're going to go through a lot of bobbin thread so have several of the right color ready to go just to make it easy and quicker for you let me explain a little bit about this machine this is not an electric machine it never was an electric machine it is not converted into a treadle it is a brand it was bought brand new I bought on Amazon and I will link to this below best sewing machine I've ever owned Janome treadle machine is what it is it's purchased as that now though I absolutely love the look of the antique treadle machines and would love to have one this the reason I went for a brand new one is because this gives me the zig-zag stitch the reverse and all the things that I need it even has other stitches that I never actually used because I'm straight stitch it zigzags and that's pretty much it so I just want to explain that to you that's why I have this I do have videos on the treadle machine I'll probably link some of the end cards and probably some up here I don't know which it will depend on I go to put this up but I also have videos on how to change the Bell to the right of me I keep my pile of squares from top to bottom in the way that I'm going to sew them together so I take my first square then the second square making sure my right sides are together and then what I found best to do since I don't like do anything special to the edges like fold them over or anything like this this is just the quickest way to do it if I set my um my stitch on a zigzag on just a slightly narrow narrower I don't do the full width zigzag and then I set it the stitch um close together fairly tight for so on this machine it will be somewhere between the three the three and two setting on that to get it just a tighter stitch and that way I know I'm going to get a fairly good hold I start with where I lock down my stitch lock it down again at the end okay then open it up move it down do my next square again making sure with each one this is really really important is locking it down at the beginning right here this is how about psycho locking it down on the end and that also will show you that you don't have to go slow on a treadle machine I always so fast or not I can get I can get a skirt done in the same amount of time on treadle machine as I could on an electric machine I love the treadle so I will however speed up the rest of this putting this particular strip together all right so now I have the second tier put together and this is the very end this is the last piece I put on so if you see in the order that I was picking that up this is the Selassie's who is on the very bottom and this here this yellow end is the very end piece of the top tier the last piece I put on there so what I'm going to do is I'm going to lay the top tier down face up down first and then I'm going to take this long strip of the second here and lay it face down on top of it okay and so there's no exact science to this you could be more precise about it if you want to but I basically just I it so the way I lay it out is I have for each proceeding here there you're going to have two to one square around two squares to one square of the tier before it so what I want to do is get the center or these two squares meet and put it roughly in the center of the tier before it and then I'm just going to take these pieces or take this square here and just try to bunch it up and evenly as I can so I'm still using a good tight zig zag stitch and I usually go a little I definitely go a little slower on this because I got a bunch of as I go and I want to check it and make sure because sometimes every now and then my folds will pop out the other way and then I have to take it apart and redo it I found doing this this way with the stigmatized method just the whole way down with a good tight stitch is better than what I was doing before by using the straight stitch and then going over it again with a zig zag stitch just using a tighter zig zag stitch all the way down I have I've noticed I've had lots of issues and it just streamlines the whole thing so I don't have as much sewing to do because the bunching part this is one of the things the making the ruffle that's going to definitely the part sexing one of the things that takes so long that and doing the head especially on the fourth tier skirt because you got to go around 48 squares that's a lot so I'll do a few more just a regular motion so you kind of see what I'm doing a lot of times I try to even zigzag or do a reverse lockdown every time I get to a seam just to make sure and I didn't do it this time because I was talking I'll show you how I do that on this it's just a just a little you know I like to make sure my skirts are going to be a couple pieces meet because that's going to be the places that might most likely want to come apart and sometimes you might find even quite bunch of as evenly but that's okay it doesn't have to be perfect all the way around interesting it to me it's kind of tracked if every single fold is at is evenly spaced the whole way around perfect to me it just looks too manufactured so in this example there's the lockdown use that you lose that whole handmade effect when you do it that way so just my personal opinion but if you're more of a perfectional perfectionist on that you may want to measure it out and evenly fold your fabric but it's going to take way more time so I'm going to go ahead and finish putting this here onto the top here [Music] okay so that is that's here and I'll show you real quick obviously I'm going to show you the skirt when it's finished and you should see a picture of it in the thumbnail but there you're going to have places if you're using a three four five or six different fabrics where your fabrics are going to overlap and when you see the first two tiers put together it might not look too eye appealing however usually the third tier is going to draw it all together now you can use more fabric pieces like you would in a quilt more different colors and prints and be able to lay it out in such a way that you have no fabrics overlapping in themselves so I was able to do that with a couple of the kids skirts I made so I'll show you pictures of those here [Music] and and you can see there's there's no overlap because I had a whole bunch of different fabrics to choose from so I made it easier for me to arrange them it does take a little bit more time so I'll be back when I have the skirt all put together so we can finish that I can finish up the rest on alright now that I have all the piers put together all three of them because I'm only doing the three tier I'm going to keep the skirt inside out or put it inside out and bring the top edges the top corners together line those up and then just make sure the edge outside edge of both of the whole skirt lines up nice and straight and then I'm just going to throw a narrow but at least semi type deep dag pitch lock it down the beginning now it turns the skirt right side out now typically what I like to do is hem it next and I'll go ahead and do that now now I do the hem I set it on the widest zigzag so I put in about hmm a little less than a half inch hem and you want to double it over fold it twice and I always start right on my section where the two pieces of fabric meet goblet reverse it now you can go around and I think you can iron this down or you can add pins to it for that way you can just kind of keep going along with your so on however for me I'd rather just fold it as I go [Music] are you done and now I'm going to start on the waist bound now the first step I'm going to do is really not super important you can choose to iron and use pins for me I like to throw basically a basting stitch down folding this over about about close to a half inch maybe about a third of an inch over right along the edge I keep it as loose as possible straight stitch of time so I straight stitch I use the whole skirt all commit all the way around okay now that that's done I messed up this back on zig-zag on the widest zigzag and what I like to do is I'll stand up and hold this up in front of the mirror so I can see what side I think would look best as the front however I think I can tell already I try to get it so there's very little of the overlap on the front part and I'm thinking the red and the front Center is going to be the baggage so the very next step I do that's once you've once you find out what part you want for your front Center now this particular step is for if you're going to do a drawstring waist which is what I'm going to do I do a combination of a drawstring and elastic in the back and I'll show you how I do that in a minute so I'm going to fold it over about an inch is what I use because the elastic I use in the back is about 3/4 inch so I want to make sure I have lining up around to be able to pull that through and then I fold it back one so it lines up right there grab my pen and I'm going to draw about an inch and a half to a two inch line straight right there where that lines up so I that just is to give me a line to work off I mean this is what I'm going to use for basically a buttonhole kind of design and so I'm going to put my big zag on at least a one I'm going to make a real tight much a satin stitch is what you're wanting to do and I'm going to start you can start anywhere on this you want let me start at this top corner over here want to get a good time going all the way across the top of that okay turn it do short edge here basically like run big buttonhole is William and then I go back so then I have got this rectangle buttonhole so what I'm going to do is I'm going to sell another satin stitch right down the center so I have to have today I'm going to with these two holes so I take my seam ripper right in the middle at the angle I'm going to rip some hole so that's why you need a good tight satin stitch going around that because you're not you're your drawstring is going to go through this and you're not going to want it to free now if you were if your buttonhole ends up bunchy like once you have your drawstring in there and cell bunched up that's not even going to show now I'm going to do a wider well I've already had on the wives exact but a looser so I'm sitting all the way on four instead of back on one where I had it for the buttonhole again I'm just going to go all the way around it about well let's see it's about an inch and a quarter inch to an inch and a quarter all the way around on the waist down okay so as far as the skirt part goes the sewing on that is done now the next thing I need to do is the drawstring so if you crochet this is going to be an option for you if you don't then at least learn how to do the chain stitch and I have a video that shows that and I will go ahead and link to that right up here that's the crochet series 101 and it shows you how to do the chain stitch I'm going to use three strands every time I make a drawstring I found three strands works better just a worsted weight yarn this is just your basic nylon redheart yarn and I'm using an off-white a navy blue and a dark red and I'm going to hold all three strands together at the same time and I'm going to use a nice big hook now though I prefer the bamboo hooks when it comes to doing two or three strands at a time the aluminum really does work better than the bamboo but I will I will link to the bamboo hooks that I like a lot below they're really inexpensive divide a whole pack of them and anyway so I I got to lock it on there or tie on and then what I'm going to do is one 100 chain stitches I'm going to cut that off and then I'm going to do another one just like that so I'll kind of show you if you're new to it so you can see how this works with the three strands but if you're you don't know anything about crochet and you want to be able to do this go check out that video on the upper corner but you just you just hold all three and just crochet with all of them at the same time okay so I want to do a total of a hundred chain all right there's a hundred you can see roughly how long this is it is it's probably about mmm two and a half feet it's not a yard slip that off then I'm going to make another one just like that now I'm ready for the next step on the waste I'm going to take my elastic usually use a piece about that long which is which is what I quit foot maybe ten eight to ten inches I just eyeball it cut off just a little extra so this is going to go on the very back side now I'm going to take there you're going to find on your chain there's one and that's fatter than the other this is the fatter end I'm going to take the end that feels flatter I'm going to cut off these ends on the other end they'll make sure you leave those on there and then I'm going to put it new sewing machine here come in the exact stitch I'm going to fit this a little tighter and I'm just going to go over this again and again the first forward reverse and pull because I want to make sure that's going to hold because there's going to be a lot of stress going on this so good go over it several times I could do just a satin stitch and go over just one time but I rather go back and forth back and forth so the stitches layer on top of each other okay and then I'm going to do the same thing with the other end now you can choose to do in all drawstring way so there's no that's it's not necessary to add the elastic it just gives it a little more comfort a little more flex when you're moving so you can still tie it tight this mate this is what helps make the skirts a little more one-size-fits-all because people can adjust it as needed and then still have that flat if I'm not going to put the elastic end I add an extra 10 stitches so it's so it's a total of I just do one long chain and it's a total of 210 chains with a case size hook okay so I'm just going to cut off a couple of out of each color similar pieces set those aside typically I like to use a diaper pin I'm not even sure if they still make diaper pins anymore but I still have some from when my kids were little that's before we thought to make our own diapers with Velcro and snaps so then I'm going to start in the one side doesn't matter which way you go first to start on me if you're going through one of those holes and if the two hardest parts are getting the first part of the yarn through and then working the elastic through you like the diaper pins because they're big and hefty and easy to guide okay so there's a knot and then you're just going to start threading it through now when I get up to the elastic I'll show you what I do there to help get the elastic through that hole okay so now the elastic is out ready to go through there so what I'm going to do is that since the elastic is a little is whiter than the yarn is I'm going to fold in half and then kind of push it through there once you get the first part of the elastic through the opening the rest will be pretty simple it's just getting at getting that elastic to go through there initially there it goes okay so now the rest should be fairly simple and be careful as you're going along that you don't the elastic is not fixed and want to make sure it stays flat then the last thing I do before I wash it and trim all the threads off and and then I usually hand sew in a nice little tag if it's one that I'm filling a little rain country tag I'm going to take these pieces that I cut earlier and I'm going to put that on the end of my drawstring pulling it through I'll show the next one slower if you know anything about how to make a tassel it's just that's what I'm doing is I'm just making a tassel and then I pull all the ends through that loop and pull it tight then just as an extra security measure I tie a knot show this a little bit slower I put the hook in through this very end stitch I grab all three piece of the yarn or you can even just do two pieces it doesn't have to be three depends on how thick you want your tassel and then I pull it through so I've got a loop there pull it up big enough so you stick your fingers to it is the easiest way to do it or you can grab it with the hook reach through grab all those loose end pieces and pull them through and then pull it tight and then tie your knot that's how you make of your own task works here [Music]

Channel: Rain Country

Views: 40,570

Rating: 4.9560184 out of 5

Keywords: Health, Garden, Frugal, Homesteading, Self-Sustainability, Cooking, DIY, Homemade, natural-living, herbs, sewing, how to, treadle machine

Id: Kd90Bx2w5Lo

Length: 29min 23sec (1763 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 04 2017