Catch-up Time--a fun elastic-waist skirt!

Wow, moving from one country to another does not go well with blogging!  I have been out of it for a couple of weeks, what with getting ready to move back to our home in the US and then working through the settling-in process, and now I think I'm about ready to start catching up on blogging some of the projects I've finished in the last few months!

I'm taking baby steps--this first post will be a quick one on a simple elastic waist skirt I made.

Rainy day photo shoot!

I used the same proportions as when I made this double-gauze skirt, but I only had wide white elastic, and I didn't like the way it looked with the more muted color palette of this lovely Melody Miller print.  So I decided to make an easy encased elastic waistband this time, and I think it's a great look!

I bought everything they had at Tomato in Nippori when I found this
Melody Miller print for about $3.25 a yard!  I think I've got about 8 yards of it left.

The waistband gives the skirt a little bit more professionally finished look, I think, than the exposed elastic waistband, although I think those have their place as well!  Rather than just folding the fabric over to make a waistband, I cut one that was about 1.5 inches longer than my hip measurement.  This reduces bulk at the waist while still allowing me to make an easy pull-on skirt.  To figure the width, I just doubled the width of my elastic and added about an inch for seam allowances.

My classic pose!

I attached the waistband to the inside first, then topstitched it to the outside of the skirt so that there would be no raw edges on the inside.  I also did french seams on the sides, so everything is enclosed! These are the little things that I appreciate now as my sewing skills increase--my older garments with raw, fraying edges on the inside just aren't holding up as well as I'd like, plus they feel much more "homemade" rather than hand-crafted when the inside doesn't look nice!

When I wear this skirt, I usually push the gathers to the back so that I get a flatter front and more poof in the back.  Just personal preference!  And I also like the way it looks with an untucked top, although I definitely only wear full skirts with fitted tops, unlike many of the Japanese women I see walking around!  They can pull off head-to-toe loose garments, but they just look like sacks on me.

I had to finish this shoot quick, since I was really starting to get wet!

The people walking down this street thought I was crazy!

I've got a few more things to show you, hopefully soon!  I was pretty busy sewing things up before we left Tokyo since I knew it would be a few months before I saw all of my pretty fabric again.