hi i’m jenny from the msqc. today i want to tell you about this darlinglittle project. i’m always looking for something fun andnew to do with pre cuts. and some of little granddaughters needed anew skirt. and so we thought, what a perfect opportunityto use a pre cut and make them a darling little skirt. hi i’m jenny from the msqc. today i wantto tell you about this darling little project. i’m always looking for something fun andnew to do with pre cuts. and some of little granddaughters needed a new skirt. and sowe thought, what a perfect opportunity to
use a pre cut and make them a darling littleskirt. so to make this little skirt you’re going to need one charm pack and a littleover a ⅓ of a yard of fabric. better get a half to be safe. you’re going to needa piece of elastic that goes around their waist. and for this project today the fabricwe’re using is called great scots and it’s, it’s by gretta lynn and it’s for canvasfabric line. and so it is darling. we really love it. so i’ll show you how to do this.you’re going to need, you’re going to use 36 squares out of your charm pack. andyou’re going to put them together in three rows. the first row is going to have nine squares.and you’re going to just randomly pick them
out and sew a quarter of an inch seam. youknow, two together, four together, you know two sets of four until you make a row of nine.the next row had 12 like this. and then the last row has 15. so you have three rows ofcharms sewn together. nine, 12 and 15. and then you’re going to cut three four inchstrips. these are four inch strips of a contrasting fabric. that’s this right here. we’remaking the bottom band. and we’re also making the waist band. so you really only need a⅓ of a yard of fabric and then you want to make sure you have room, you know a littlewiggle room in case there’s a boo boo or something. so here’s your, your three four inch strips.and i’ve cut them and i’ve ironed them
in half like this. i sewed this one will goon the top for the waist band. it will go up here. this one i sewed two of them togetherright here. and i just pressed that seam open for less bulk. you know it just, it doesn’treally matter either way but that’s just how i did it. and i cut off my selvedge endhere at this end. and i’m going to put this strip of fabric along the bottom edge of mybottom row. and this is going to make the hem. and it’s already going to be done andfinished. no turning under or anything. so i’m just going to lay this right sides together.and we’re going to sew all the way down this side, quarter of an inch and then pressit open. so let’s go to the sewing machine and do that.
alright so i’ve got this laid right alongthe edge. and i’m just going to go ahead and sew this down. ok i’m almost to theend right here and presto we’re finished. so now what we’re going to do is we’regoing to trim off this strip. let me trim these threads. we’re going to trim off thisstrip right here even with the charm pack. so we’ll just cut it off right like that.then we’re going to go press it open and we’re going to press this so that this seamright here comes up onto the charm pack. because the next thing we’re going to do is we’regoing to topstitch this line just right along this edge and that will hold that seam down.so let’s go ahead and press this open and again i’m going to press this to make suremy seam is at the, up onto the top of the
charm pack. and it really wants to do thatbecause the seam always wants to lay in the direction of the biggest bulk so it will,it will slide up there pretty easily. i’m kind of pushing it up there with my fingeras i’m going along. and now what we want to do is topstitch and the reason we’regoing to go ahead and topstitch this down is so that it holds that seam up there andit will help with fraying. you know if you had a serger or something, you could sergeright along that seam. but i would still topstitch it down. i just like that finished look. so when you topstitch you just make sure,this is the stitch that everyone is going to see so you want to make sure it’s goodand straight. and i hope i can do that for
you. and but what we’re going to do is youwant, you want to line up, have a good guide lined up on your sewing machine. so i havea place on my foot. i always make sure that seam runs right along the side of it. andthat helps me get a good straight edge. so i’m just going to come along here. and it’sok to go nice and slow on this. and you can see right here that, see that edge is goingto be nice, it’s going to be uniform because i’m following right along this fold. soi will just stitch this up and meet you back here. so now i’m going to do the same thing tothe top. i’m going to take my, my folded piece. i’m going to clip off my selvedge.and i’m just going to go ahead and sew this
right along this top edge just like i didon the bottom edge. so now i sewed the bottom edge of the skirt and now i’ve sewn thetop. and you can see right along here, i did my topstitching but i also have another rowof stitching along the side of the fabric band that i folded. and what that does isit’s going to keep that waist band from twisting and turning. that’s just a little,a little tip i learned when doing, i used to do a lot of clothing sewing. and it keepsthat waist band from turning. ok so now we’re ready to put these threetiers together. and we’re going to need to do some gathering. the gathering, there’sall kinds of ways to do gathering. my favorite way is to use a zig zag stitch or just topin it a lot so that you’re just easing
the gathers through while you’re sewingrather than doing all that gathering work. i’m going to show you the zig zag way andthe pinning way. and so i’ll start with this bottom piece. the bottom piece we’regoing to have to gather in so that it fits to this middle piece. the middle piece wewill also gather in so that it fits to the top. so let’s go ahead and run a gatheringstitch on this. and i’ll show you how i do that. so over here at the sewing machine you haveyour top thread and you have your bottom thread. i’m going to put my top thread behind hereand i’m going to hold onto this bottom thread. and i’m going to change my sewing machineso that it does a zig zag. and i am going
to move my settings so that they are as wideand as long as they will possibly go. so my settings are on 4.0 and 7.0 for the widthand the length. i just want a really big stitch. and i’m going to make sure that the, mybobbin thread is, i’m pulling it out of the sewing machine. i have a big long pieceso that it will stretch all the way along the top of my fabric. and then i’m justgoing to zig zag over the top of it. so i’m going to line up my, my thread right there.and you’ll be able to see this coming out the back of my sewing machine. i keep thethread right in the middle between the zig zags. and this is the quickest and easiesti know to do a gather without worrying about breaking a zillion threads. oop. i kind ofhad a zig in my zag right there but that will
be alright because we can always take the,the gathering out at the end. so now iâ€m going to pull this out and i’m remembering,oh, which one is, there’s my bobbin thread right there. so now you can see i have thislittle bobbin thread in there and it just pulls so easily. i mean you can just really.you don’t have to worry about your bobbin thread pulling. and you’ll just ease thosegathers along there until it’s the same size. ok so i sewed down the gathering stitch onhere and i have my thread to pull. and then what i did was i took my row and i foldedit in half and put a pin right here at the middle and folded it in half again and putpins at the quarters. because we’re going
to put these all together and we want themmatched up evenly, then we’ll pull that string and do it. so then i also put pinson the next row at the middle and at the quarters so that we can match them right up. so whatwe’re going to do then is we’re going to pull this one. and we’re going to layit over here. and we’re going to put a pin in our center pins together right here. andwe’re going to go ahead and put one pin there and make sure we take the other oneout. we only need one pin in each place. we’re going to pin the ends together like this.over here is my end. and then we’re going to pin the two quarters together. so i’mgoing to go ahead and pin this quarter over here. we want to get it all pinned togetherbefore our pins fall out and we lose our place.
there we go. alright so then we’re lookingfor our bobbin thread here. and let me see here. i’ve kind of lost it so let me pullthis out. i’ve got to make sure we get that thread right there, that’s the one we stitchedover. and it’s the one that will work perfect for tightening these up. see how quickly thatjust tightened up and made the one piece fit to the next piece. so you’re going to haveto, you know, scrunch it a little bit all the way down. and then, you know, just makesure that that, make sure that your pieces become the same size. you know we’re tryingto shrink one row to the next row. and you’ll end up like a lot of times with a little bunchlike this and you just want to smooth that out so that it’s evenish all along there.you know, you don’t have a big wad of gathers
in one spot. and then we’re going to goover to the sewing machine and we’re just going to stitch this down. so you’ll notice when you’re sewing thisone on you’ll want to make sure your bigger piece is on the top so that you can adjustthings. but you’ll notice that there’s not a lot of, it’s not a lot of tight gathers.it’s just kind of a nice loose gathering that’s going on here. and because you’vegot your middles and your sides quartered you’re not going to have too much gatheringin one place and not enough at the other. and then that zig zag stitch will kind ofshow but that’s, that’s something you’ll just pull out. it’s loose, you’ll, youknow, grab a hold of that thread and pull
that out because you don’t want to leavethat in there. ok so whew, take your time on this, you know this, you know gatheringisn’t, you know it’s not something that’s totally easy but it’s not totally hard either.you just have to relax and not worry about it. . but what we’re going to do is we’regoing to go ahead and do the same thing to the next row. see how cute this looks. we’realready almost onto our last tier. so this one is going to go on here like this one.oh one thing i forgot to mention is if you have a print, like i have doggies on thisone, you want them right side up so check that out when you’re putting your stufftogether. so again on this one i’m going to go aheadand pin the middles to the middles. and the
edge to the edge. and this, i’m actuallygoing to show you how i do this one without doing the running stitch. you know me, i’malways in a hurry and i just, actually i’m not always in a hurry i just like to do thingsfast. i’m the speedy gonzalez of the quilt world. so what i’m going to do is i’mgoing to pin these in half. and i pulled this to make sure my middles meet up like this.and so this is my quarters. and i put a pin there and hook them together. and take thatother pin out. and then i’m going to do one more pinning of eighths. so just likei did the quarters, i’m going to find the middle and i’m going to pin them togetheragain. so then i’m just dealing with little four inch spaces that need, that need my gathersin. it’s just kind of a, of a quick way
to gather without actually using a gatheringstitch. the gathering stitch is definitely the easiest. but doing costuming for so manyyears i, i just, i just learned these little tricks where i do things real quick. alrighty. so now you’ll see right here, this is mytop row. and you’ll see i have this little extra edge right here. and what i’m goingto do when i go to the sewing machine is i’m just going to kind of put a little piece inand put a little piece in as i go along. so you can see the gathering stitch would makethat a lot easier. but i’m just going to do it this quick way, there’s you know lotsof ways to do things. and i’m going to use the quick way. well quick for me i guess ishould say. because i’m only dealing with
like little tiny four inch places, it shouldcome out pretty good. so as you come to the needle i just pull them out and i just keepsliding this fabric underneath the foot right there. and get, you know it’s kind of likemaking tiny little pleats. but it’s, it just works, it’s easy and if you put a littlelotion on your hands they’ll stick to the fabric a little better and you’ll be ableto get them under. or you can lick your fingers a lot like i do. i get in such trouble forthat. i don’t mean to. it’s hard to grab on that fabric sometimes. ok so you just wantto keep sliding that fabric under there and make sure that, you know they stay fairlyeven. it’s like little tiny pleats. just slides under there so easy. i take the, makesure you take the pin out before you get to
it, you don’t really want to sew over thatpin. and i’m pretty close to the home stretch here. there we go, home stretch. alright now let’s take out the pins andtake a look at this. run my finger along here. the fun thing about this little skirt is thatit really will fit anybody from like size two to ten. i mean it’s a darling littleskirt. it gets a little shorter and you can put some leggings under it. and it’s justa cute little skirt. i have some pins in the bottom here. and you can actually sew therings together, you know each, each strip you can sew together as a ring and then sewthe final one together. there’s, there’s just lots of different ways and ideas. okso here we go. here’s our little skirt.
we’re going to put right sides togetherand we’re going to sew this back seam. but we’re just going to sew up to here becausewe still have to string our elastic. so we’re going to lay these right sides together likethis. and we make sure that this right here, that these are going to match up. our contrastingfabric is going to match up. and the bottom is going to match up. so we go ahead and putthose together and sew that back seam and that. and we are so close . we’re goingto go ahead and backstitch on this because this is clothing. we don’t want your skirtto come apart. please no! no wardrobe malfunctions. we want to try and match up our rows of charmsso that they are, so that our stitch lines stay perfectly matched. we don’t want asquare here and a half a square there. so
then what i’m going to do is i’m goingto go ahead and pull this out and i’m going to now feed the elastic through the top. and see this skirt, you know, i can be assmall or large as you want. and, what i did, let me show you first. what i did was i stucka big safety pin on the end of my elastic and then i can feed it right in there. youcan use any size of elastic that will fit in your waist band. the wider the elasticthe, the stiffer and taller that band will stand up. i have elastic that i bought onhuge spools. so i use it for everything, whether, whether it’s the right size or not. it,it goes in whatever it is i’m working on. i’ve got the elastic threaded through here.and you want to make sure that it’s the
size of the waist that you want. so you’llwrap that elastic around whoever the skirt is for. and you know, just make sure it’ssnug. you don’t want it tight. and then you’ll go ahead and just make sure bothends are sticking out. and then we’re just going to sew across here. and i’m goingto double stitch that so that it won’t come undone. make sure it’s good and lined up.there we go. stitch down and back and down. and then i’m going to trim those off. therewe go. trim this little top piece here. and then we’re going to flip this right sideout. it’s already hemmed. it’s got a little waist band. how cute is that? how adorable?oop, i’ve got a little piece up. let me pop that down. there you go. take a look atthat. that’s darling.
let me show you another one over here thatwe made. this is so cute because, i mean, a christmas charm pack, a valentine’s charmpack. anything you want. and you can make this little skirt. now on this one you cansee we didn’t put the top waist band. we just folded over our charm pack and made thewaist band out of that. so you know take this. if you need one a little longer you can addanother row of squares. take this idea and run with it. this is a darling little charmpack skirt. and we hope you enjoyed this tutorial from the msqc.