Holiday Sewing
2020 has been a difficult year financially, its important not to overlook or gloss over this fact. While I love sewing and it’s offered me a lot of purpose in this season it can be a very expensive hobby. With buying presents for a large family, finances have been very tight this December after an especially difficult year. However, I still wanted to make myself something pretty to wear for the holidays. This pattern is FREE to download! This pattern is a great first project for anyone who has never sewn before but wants to start making their own clothes. Additionally, I thrifted some of the fabric which cut down the total cost of these pieces! If the financial cost of sewing has put you off trying it I hope this will give you some ideas and resources to give holiday sewing a go for cheap!
PEPPERMINT WRAP SKIRT
This wrap skirt is availble from Peppermint Magazine. This is the pattern that made me believe I could actually make clothing that was fit to be worn. Since then I have made a bunch for myself as well as friends. It’s a simple construction with a professional-looking finished product. To sew this skirt requires only straight stitches, darts, and a buttonhole. But let’s start at the beginning. Peppermint Magazine releases a free pattern every three months. To download any of their patterns you need to sign up with your email. Once the pattern is downloaded print out all the sheets. Any print-at-home pattern will have a gauge on the first page to make sure it’s being printed at the correct size. I always print the first sheet out just to make sure the settings are correct. Follow the guideline on each page to assemble your free sewing pattern.
I know many people dislike assembling PDF patterns but I really enjoy this process. I’ll put on a movie and just work away at it. Just make sure you give yourself the time to fully assemble the pattern if you are working towards a holiday sewing deadline.
SOURCING FABRIC
Sourcing fabric can be the most expensive part of a sewing project but it doesn’t have to be. Thrift stores are a great place to buy fabric. My local thrift store does sell fabric but if yours doesn’t get creative and check out the bedding and drapery sections. Since this project is simple in nature it is a great project to experiment with different types of fabric. Peppermint magazine made the skirt out of thick wool fabric. This would make a structured and warm skirt for fall/winter. But today’s project needed fabric for holiday sewing. I went the opposite direction and made mine from a thrifted thin green drapey fabric. Having a wide variety of fabric types you could choose from makes it easier to thrift fabric. Makes sense right? If you aren’t looking for something super specific it will be easier to find something in a second-hand shop.
Putting it all together
The Peppermint wrap skirt is already so customizable but they took it one step further and gave us two length options! What more could we ask for? I have a printed out version from ages ago but this one felt deserving of a new pattern. Ok, I am lying I had to print another copy because my first one was cut to the shorter length. If I didn’t have to use more paper and ink I wouldn’t have. So, another pattern was printed, glued together, and cut out.
So, I was very much sure I had printer paper, but surprise I didn’t. I’d come too far to wait until the morning when I could buy more paper so I just pushed ahead printing my pattern half in the lined paper. If you have another option I would really recommend you don’t do this. The pages didn’t fit together as they should have.
A large piece of fabric is needed for this project especially if you want to make a longer version. This skirt only has five pattern pieces but they are all large or long. My fabric was almost too small so to work around this I halved the width of my waistbands. What this means for the finished project is that the waistband and ties will the thinner.
Start the holiday sewing
The first step is to sew up all the darts. This makes for excellent practice if you’re new to darts because there are four in total to make this skirt. It’s important, if you can, to iron down your darts. You can see from the picture above how much neater your project will be. It’s easy to tell which side is ironed and which isn’t. On the flat edge of both side pieces fold over twice to finish the edges. NEXT is to attach the right and left sides to the back piece. To attach the sides you use french seams. If you’re intimidated by french seams don’t worry they are much easier than they seem and give your clothes such a quality finish. There is a multitude of french seam tutorials available with a simple google or youtube search. This one is my favourite!
Waist tie time
Attach both waist tie pieces and attach to the skirt pieces. Before I would ignore the notches you should cut into patterns. They really do make sewing much easier. If this is your first garment sewing adventure marking your notches is a really fantastic habit to develop. Start now and don’t like me assume it’s a waste of time. It’s not, it’s really not.
The waist tie can be a bit fiddly especially if you don’t have enough fabric and they are especially thin and take ages to turn out. Bleh! It. Is. A. Process. The waistband and waist ties are much easier if you go heavy on the ironing. For once I actually did use interfacing to reinforce my buttonhole. Not sure it especially helped with this thin waist tie but it was we’ll see as I wear it more. Since my waist tie needed to be thinner than the normal pattern suggests I put my button hole in horizontally instead of vertically.
The last bit, which is almost always my least favourite part, is to fold up the bottom hem and sew into place. At least with this project, the bottom hem is just a nice straight line. This holiday sewing is done!
Time to wear your holiday outfit!
The final skirt is beautifully draped and clings nicely to my body while still having enough room to allow the eating of many Christmas cookies. The fabric has a sheen to it that makes it a little difficult to photograph accurately. It’s a festive green with black floral print.
Very happy with the thinner waist ties. I think it better suits this lightweight fabric better. Hope you’ve enjoyed this holiday sewing journey! Mostly I hope you feel inspired to make yourself something lovely for the holidays. 2020 was hard, you deserve nice things!
-Happy Holidays
Hannah
p.s. Here is another project that’s less to do with sewing but still festive.
Home Made Christmas Ornaments
