[Intro music]
Hi! Today I’m going to show you how to make
a knife pleated skirt with a hidden zipper. So let’s begin!
So, the first thing you need to do is to take your waist measurement just below the smallest
part of your waist, or where ever you want your skirt to sit.
My waist measurement is 30 inches. Multiply this measurement by three add two inches to
either side for the zipper and the seam allowance and this will be the width of your fabric.
The length will be however long you want your skirt to be. Mine is 17 inches.
Cut a piece of fabric out to this size. Start making your measurements from 1 inch
in. This will allow you to insert a hidden zipper later on. Make a mark along the fabric
every 3 inches until you reach the end of your fabric. Your marks will go in a repeating
pattern. One, two, three, one, two, three. Put a pin in every "one" mark.
To make a pleat, pinch the fabric at "one", fold it over to "three", and remove the pin
from "one" and pin it in place. Here’s how it looks from the opposite angle,
which might make this clearer. Pinch the fabric at "one", fold it over to "three", remove the
pin from "one", pin it in place. Continue doing this all the way along your skirt.
Once it’s all pinned up like this, sew using a straight stitch in the opposite direction
from where you pleated it. This will make sure that you won’t bunch up the pleats
on the other side of the fabric. Then (and this is optional) you can sew down
each pleat, one or two inches. On the bottom of the skirt (the edge without
the pleats) make a hem by folding this raw edge up twice, and using a straight stitch,
stitch over the top. This is called a rolled hem.
Now, I should have ironed my skirt before sewing it, but it doesn’t really matter.
You can iron your pleats flat here too. Basically though when in doubt, IRON EVERYTHING! :D
One last little thing is remember that 1 inch you left free for the hidden zipper? Pin this
bit down out of the way so it won’t get caught up when you sew on your waist band
and we’ll come back to this bit later. Cut out another rectangle of fabric whose
dimensions are the same as the width of your pleated skirt. So mine is 32 inches, and whose
height is about double the thickness that you want your waist band to be. Fold this
in half length-ways, right sides together. Then you ‘re going to do a straight stitch
right down the length like this, and then turn the tube inside out when you are done,
and it’s a good idea to iron this flat. Then place the waist band on top of the skirt
right sides together. Pin it on so it’s lined to the top raw edge of the pleats. Attach
it to the skirt using a straight stitch, and go slowly while you’re sewing here.
And that’s your waistband done! Fold your skirt over rights sides together
so that the end with the raw edge hidden under the pleat (that bit that you pinned out of
the way earlier) meets up with the raw edge at the other end of the skirt.
Pin these two together all the way down that length. Match up the zipper next to the skirt,
and make a mark where the zipper ends. So you would do a proper back-tack straight stitch
down this part of the skirt to attach these two ends of the skirt together, but above
the mark you would just do a very long basting stitch, which is a loose temporary stitch
to hold the fabrics together. Press this seam open and place your zipper
face down on top of the seam. Line the zipper teeth up with the seam, and pin it on one
side only. Then sew down the side that doesn’t have the pins on it. When you get to the bottom,
remove the pins, and sew back up the other side. So once you’ve sewn the zipper on,
the right side of your fabric skirt will look like this. Bust the zipper out of there by
ripping apart the basting stitch that you made before, and there’s your hidden zipper!
So you could add buttons in this step, but I’m going to use press studs because they’re
really easy to add to a garment. [Annotation: I also finished off the raw edges
of the waistband by folding them underneath, and sewing across]
I’m going to figure out where I want my press studs to go on the waistband so it will
close up the hidden zipper, and then I just attach them using a needle and a thread.
And so now my skirt closes up, awesome! And this is the finished result.
So that’s all there is to it, and if this video helped you out then please give me a
thumbs up, subscribe to my channel, and I’ll see you guys in my next video.
[outro music]