In my last fabric haul from Stoff & Stil I picked up a piece of pleated fabric. This is the kind of stuff that’s been chemically treated to have the pleats permanently in place. These pleats run horizontally – so selvedge to selvedge – you can find fabric like this with different depths of pleats (the piece I got had shallow pleats).

Mostly this fabric is used to make simple skirts, keeping the pleats running vertically and adding a waistband. I’d always avoided this kind of skirt as I felt the style was more suited to less curvy people! But when I found the fabric at Stoff & Stil, it was cheap enough that I felt it warranted an experiment!

My concept for this experiment was to keep it as simple as possible! I wanted to essentially create a tube and add elastic to one end!

I ended up cutting a piece of fabric that was 115cm wide and 75cm long, cutting the fabric on the crossgrain so the pleats would be running vertically on the skirt.

I then sewed up the short ends of the rectangle to create a tube.

I was deciding between whether to just sew black elastic to the top of the skirt waistband to create a channel for it instead. I opted for the second option so I ended up folding over the top edge of the skirt by 5cm and top stitching it down at 4cm from the folded edge leaving a gap of 8cm. I threaded my elastic through the channel, sewed the ends together and closed the gap in the channel.

Because I used the selvedge edge at the bottom of the skirt I decided to leave it without hemming it as this edge wouldn’t unravel and I was at my laziest when making this!

Including making all all the decisions about the size, shape and finishing of the skirt, I had it finished in under an hour!

I love a quick easy make like this!

Also I think I can pull off this style of skirt now! I’m totally regretting not getting the fancier stuff from The New Craft House now!