63- Sewing my Rainbow Tiered Skirt Tips for sewing Gathers


Stories start way before you see the final outcome.  This project started a year ago.  I thought it would be better to help make it easy for you, by giving the patterning details first, after which I would share my completed project.  That didn't happen.  So finally, here you are, the Rainbow skirt inspired by a Zimmermann design I found on Far-fetch last year (2021). 
Original contents were: "Fabric 100%

Project Details:

Pattern-
My own draft. The tutorial for designing your own is in this videoThe original video on developing this skirt was filmed and uploaded to my Youtube channel last year.  I give the exact details on creating and calculating the tiers for your sizes and height.  
For this video, I'm showing how I selected my fabric colors and designed the skirt on the Ipad, as requested by you all. 
I include, also in this video how to use your machine to gather the tiers using your sewing machine's "shirring" foot.  Details on how to calculate the ratio I used are also included.  For my skirt, I used a 1.5 to 1 ratio, which was a total of over 215 inches, a lot of gathering. 

Fabric-

I purchased the linen fabrics from Sew Much Fabric. I was happy with the weight. It was easy to gather once the stabilizer was added to the edges. I washed all colors together, using a can of Coca-Cola to soften the fabric.  Since the full skirt would be cleaned as one, I added the tide color catcher for dealing with any bleeding.

Gathered Skirt Tiers-

  1. Navy Blue
  2. Lemon Yellow
  3. Kiwi Lime
  4. Antique Pink
  5. Light blue (A gift from a fellow fashionista.) (Thanks, Becky.)
  6. Red double cloth linen
  7. Orange linen (Universal Fabrics Houston) I hear @sewmuchfabric now has some orange in stock)

Ric-rack Trim: Universal fabrics (Houston)


All the linens were very easy to work with.  Warning: If you don't like wrinkles, a gathered linen skirt is not for you.  The gathers took very nicely and sewed up relatively evenly as I had hoped.  There are places where you would need to support the edges.  I caution you, however, against too much stay tape.  The taped edges on my skirt created much more stiffness than I wanted and caused the gathers to not take in evenly as with all the other tiers.  PSA- I'll save you the eye strain. It's the green tier against the yellow.  It just would not gather properly.  I had lots of sliding and slipping.  I suggest you gather first, then use an overlock plus lightweight fray check once you're done.

Would I make this again?  Absolutely, but with other fabrics.  This gave me too many sleepless nights worrying about which colors I should use against another.  LOL.

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