Resizing a Vintage Pleated Skirt (Pt. 2)

Today I'll be completing my latest project, resizing the blue and green plaid wool skirt.

Last time around, I resized the skirt by taking in the side seams and altering the pleats. All there's left to do is to finish the inside side seams, reattach the waistband, and sew on the finishing touches.

Firstly, I cut down the extra fabric on the side seams, then struggled to figure out how to finish those raw edges without an overlocker for about an hour, destroying many a scrap piece of fabric in the process. The wool of my skirt seems to be very fine and easy to fray, which I'm not sure is normal or not for wools in general (Those more knowledgable than I, feel free to comment), so that all of my attempts at zigzagging the edges on scraps just bunched up and pulled at the fabric like crazy.

In any case, I decided to pink the edges, then zigzag far enough away from the edge so as to avoid the rolling up effect. I folded these pieces of seam allowance flat, then folded the hem back up, and hand-stitched it down, picking up only a very small amount of fabric on the outside, so as to make it invisible from the outside. (I of course neglected to take photos of this process, not that it was particularly riveting).

Next, I moved the original skirt tags to lay at the center of my back. Then, I took the waistband and pinned it upside-down to my skirt, right sides together, so that when I folded it up, it would cover the overlocked edge at the top. I then seamed down this pin line as seen below.

Next, I folded the waistband up and over onto the inside of the skirt, and pressed everything flat. For the next step, I needed to secure down the inner part of the waistband. I chose to hand-sew a backstitch in the ditch where the waistband is connected to the skirt in the front. Even though it took much longer than it would have on the machine, I am glad I did it by hand. I generally enjoy doing hand-stitching when practical, as I find it rather meditative and think it gives a handmade quality to a garment. In this case, I was also better able to ensure that it was as invisible as possible from the outside.

See the underside of the backstitch in the below image:

All that remained, then, was to sew the button back on, and add a snap on the inner waistband for the overlapping section. I generally like to wax my thread for doing hand-sewing like this, as it keeps the thread from knotting up so much.

And voila! The final result:

Close-up of the side pleats:

This project took much, much longer than anticipated— likely because I completely underestimated how difficult it would be to not only figure out the logistics of everything, but also to execute it. But overall, it was a great project to hone my hand and machine sewing skills, and it really reactivated the math and problem solving side of my brain. This is really starting to sound like a bad high school essay, so I think I had better end on that note.

Thank you for reading!