Ribbon Skirt Tutorial with Kathy Knott - Elder-in-Residence

good morning anin bourgeous i'm kathy knott um i'm from curve lake first nation and i've been asked to film a short segment on how to make a ribbon skirt so i've chosen my material and it's a turquoise blue and it's got a fern pattern on it and i've chosen this to go with three ribbons i normally do three ribbons on a skirt and what we'll be doing is a very basic ribbon skirt today one that's simple easy and anybody can do it as long as they have a machine a sewing machine a iron and some ribbon and material so the first thing when we're making ribbon skirts and what we'll do is make a ribbon skirt that can be used for traditional gatherings for ceremonies or for powwow but you can also wear it uh just as your special skirt anyway what i have is approximately three yards of material and it's cotton and it has been pre-washed so uh to get all the sizing out of it and make sure that it doesn't shrink after you make your skirt otherwise that'd be a little bit of a disaster if your skirt shrunk on you and you couldn't fit it anymore anyway first thing uh that we should do is uh decide on how much material that we're going to use for our skirt and what i do or what i suggest you do is take your material wrap it around yourself you need to make sure that you have enough material that you can move in it or if you're being chased by a bear or something that you can run so you take a take a step a giant step and your material should then end at your foot at the front of your foot and then we will take the material make a little snip and what will happen is since it's woven it will rip straight it's the easiest thing to do the next step in the process is to take an iron and what we will do is take about a third of it approximately a third and fold it and if you fold the edges along the straight part of the material you will get a straight straight edge you'll get a straight fold sorry and then you're going to press to fold into this material right sides together i always work with right sides together so i can remember how to put things together what i'm doing is making a line so i can start placing my ribbon on the skirt we'll press it really well so the line will be easily seen so there's i don't know can you the fold is there and i've chosen three ribbons that are coordinating one is a variegated next is a pattern and then another plain purple the next step in the process to cut the length of ribbon that you're going to need of course i always cut a little extra just in case straight lines then you place it on your fold so you get a straight line i'm just ironing the ribbon out so it lays flat some people do in fact use a heat and bond this you can put under your ribbon and use it to hold the ribbon in place while you're sewing i tend not to use that i like to pin my ribbons so you simply take the ribbon that's along your fold and start pinning it across okay so it's pinned and now we'll move to the machine sewing machine so i have my machine threaded with coordinating thread and i'm going to sew the top of the ribbon down first and i try to keep the shorter part of the fabric on the inside just because it makes life easier and my machine is threaded and i'm good to go and you try and sew as close to the edge of the ribbon as possible oops i just back stitch back stitching is when you make the machine go backwards so you you're sealing off the edge and then you simply snip the thread close remove your pins put them back in your pin cushion ribbon one is down i love the colors so we will do the second ribbon using the same process we'll just cut the ribbon to the length that we need snip and we're good to go if you can see put the ribbon approximately a quarter an inch past the foot however you can make the decision about how far apart you want your ribbons some people actually put them at the um ribbons right tight together but like i say i like to have them a little bit apart so you can in fact see material in between so with that being said we're good to go again keeping close to the edge of the ribbon [Music] if you haven't used a sewing machine too often one of the things that you will find is the machine will pull your fabric through all you have to do is guide it and hold it still machine moves the material for you so i'm just holding the material tight it doesn't bunch up when it sews and you get buckles i guess i should say how i learned to sew my mother always we were a big family there were nine of us and my mother used to had this old sewing machine and i actually still have it and she would get clothes uh old coats and things like that and she'd make quilts and she'd make us outdoor clothing with the old clothes i used to love sit watching sit and watching my mom so yeah we didn't we didn't have a lot of money the way people do today she either remade things or made us new things with old holes i'm just going to the other side of the ribbon and sewing that down in the same way that i've sewn the other ribbons this straight stitch so it's stitched on both sides now you can see it's not going to come up when you wash it or when you're out dancing or sitting in ceremony [Music] okay so i've got two ribbons sewn on and it's starting to look pretty good we've got the purple in purple thread in we're good to go again we're going to put the purple ribbon down now and again using the same process using the foot as our measurer and we're just going to stitch straight stitch [Music] we're going to stitch the second side down purple ribbon okay snip the thread off one last piece of sewing this ribbon on is to go back and finish with the purple colored thread the other part of the variegated first ribbon we put on and i've sewn for years so i tend to go fast but you don't have to go faster we're done ribbons okay so the next piece that we're going to do is um make the top part the right length so we can in fact then put a like a little tube in here just sew a hem at the top so we can put elastic through so your skirt won't fall down anyway we'll rip the material the same way we did earlier and again if you notice i just took and measured so i'm going to have some material to fold down and create the tube or the opening for the elastic and enough to keep your hem but again if you're wearing your skirt to ceremony or using it for traditional purposes you want your skirt to cover your ankles we want again just to rip it get that straight line and we'll save this material for another project and i'm going to now need to take a moment and just uh press a a small hem down so we can put the the elastic in the elastic that i'm using is about i guess an inch so i'm going to measure so that we can have enough room for the ribbon to to fit in so i will take the time now and iron a another crease so we can put the elastic in there are little tools that you can buy to measure or use a ruler and like i said the material or the elastic that i'm going to be using is about an inch wide so i'm going to make the hem here approximately two inches we'll just take this down along just to show another technique of how to and when i'm showing my grandchildren how to sew i will use the little tools because they don't have the same experience so we've folded it down once approximately two inches what we're going to do is fold this under this raw edge under so we will have a nice finished looking seam here and again you don't really need to measure this because you're just it's going to be hidden and but you do want to have it pretty firmly under there now those um individuals again that are not experienced sewers might like to take the opportunity just to pin these down if you make you feel more comfortable we're good to go we're going to sew the hem in so we can then after we do the bottom hem so we can then put the elastic through and sew down the sides okay i'll take a moment and change the threads okay we're ready to go we're going to sew the um hem down for the elastic and um we've measured it's to approximately two inches and we're going to use three quarters or an inch ribbon or ribbon elastic and uh so we're just going to sew close to the edge again you'll notice that i've got um the material on the outside where the um or inside of the skirt where the sewing won't show and we'll just have a nice finished edge so i'm just going to sew again close to where i've folded the material one of the things probably well not probably is a good idea is to remove the pins before you sew over them because sometimes they'll break your needle if you hit the needle right on or hit the pin right on as we go okay back stitch again so your stitching doesn't come undone and then we have the hem for the ribbon to go through okay so we've measured the length that we want the skirt to be so we're going to now again use our iron to um make the bottom hem again taking the rough or the rough edge and we're going to fold it in again approximately two inches because we're going to do the same thing that we did on the top as on the bottom fold this under about halfway so you wind up with an inch hem actually but this just gives it a little bit more body on the bottom and then we'll sew it just as we did earlier on the top hem so we are now going to sew the bottom hem again using the same measurements right close to the edge of this stitch okay cut the excess ribbon off and any long threads we have a pretty much the basis for a skirt three ribbons a top hem for the elastic and a bottom hem just to finish off the skirt and we're going to put it together now to make a circle and so we're going to take these ribbons and match them up and now we will use pins matching up the sides so now we we've got the side pin down and what we're going to do is just take and sew that down and what we will have then is kind of a tube a circular tube and the skirt will be 90 percent finished so we will start at the bottom and work our way to the top because of course we don't want to close in the the tube part because we will be able so so we will be able to put the elastic through making sure that the two sides are together it's pinned and we're just going to go again and we will back stitch again it's making the machine go backwards so the stitching will be secure and holding making sure that again that the two sides are together i'm gonna stitch and most machines will have a marking that's 5 8 that's a good seam length because then you have enough fabric to hold the seam in you won't get the pulling that you normally would so we're getting to the top where the seam or the hem is for the elastic so we will get close but not go right to the top we'll fix that or we'll finish that end off after we put the elastic in what's a good idea is to take your skirt that's now got it it's made into a tube and open the seam and press that flat it'll just make the skirt sit nicer final step is to take your elastic that i can measure how much you're going to use for your waist and leave enough so it is comfortable because you want to eat uh indian tacos or furry bread anyway um just so it's comfortable and then we'll cut it yep works and then i have on my pin cushion a larger needle that i will take and put in one side of the elastic and then we'll use the pin to thread it through so the open end we just open it up put the pin in and then we just start threading it through once you get it going it'll go in there we go so it started and then you just thread it through gently pulling so we're getting to the end so we'll get a pin now at the end use the pin to hold the or to secure the elastic so it doesn't go all the way through and we'll just keep threading it through using the pin almost to the end here there it is so we've got the elastic threaded through and we're going to use our pin and you'll note that i am saving an extra bit at the end to hold it secure and then we're going to finish by stitching up the same width the 5 8 on the machine and then our skirt will be done time to dry it on okay last bit of sewing get my 5 8 seam and we will finish it up and here you do want to go over the elastic a couple of times just to make sure that it'll stay in and we are done we'll take a moment and turn it inside out and see what our finished product looks like after we trim off the ends and just make it neater the moment there's our ribbon skirt all good to go simple basic ribbon skirt but i'm sure it'll be really comfortable so the ribbon skirt that we started today was the fabric i chose was turquoise and then chose to accent it with purple ribbons and you'll notice that the ribbons do wind up around your knees it's just where i like to place them the skirt is made wide enough that you can run you can move you can dance whatever we've got our ankles covered and we're good to go thank you for the opportunity i hope that as you try to make your ribbon skirt that you have fun you enjoy and remember it is yours it's something that you need to enjoy and you should have fun wearing guava and we will see you soon you

Channel: McMaster Indigenous Student Services

Views: 10,742

Rating: 4.8971725 out of 5

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Id: kufPUMjlq-0

Length: 26min 59sec (1619 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 18 2020