Fitting a Yoke Waistband: Part 2

This post has been a long time coming, which is quite silly since it’s so simple.  I meant to take another photo of the muslined yoke waistband, but hadn’t gotten around to doing so.  I’m soo close to having the actual skirt finished that I figured you guys wouldn’t mind waiting a bit more to see that my alterations ended up working in the end.

As a refresher, the only change I needed to make to my yoke waistband for the Twinkle Skirt via Burda was to increase the length in the center back in order to make the yoke hem parallel to the floor all the way around.  So this quick tutorial will show you how to do just that for the newbie sewers out there.

First off, trace your pattern piece out on a fresh piece of paper (tissue paper, freezer paper, etc.) :

Be sure to copy all of the pattern markings onto the new pattern piece also.

I guestimated that I’d need about 1 inch longer at the center back of the yoke after trying on my muslin.  (I figured I could always reduce the yoke hem if I needed to, but you can’t increase it again so easily.) 

I marked 1″ down from the original hem at the center back (fold) which is on the right of the image below.  Then I began to draw a nice curve, that really starts about half way towards the back.

 Each individual person will need a slightly different curve, depending on how your muslin fits on your body.  You may need more fabric at the hip, or perhaps some of you may need less fabric at the center back.  You can make these slight changes at the seam lines where you need them.

But when you make any drastic changes, you’ll have to make sure that you also adjust the connecting pattern piece to ensure that the seams line up.  For the Twinkle Skirt, I fit this skirt so that I would have the yoke hem ending at the largest diameter on my hips/butt.  Therefore I just cut the bottom portion of the skirt out using that measurement since I knew I didn’t need any additional fitting below the hips.

Here’s the final pattern piece:

I ended up adding a little bit of paper at the center back to make the curve, more curvey.  (My drawn line just above that looked a bit flat IMO.) 

So for now, you’ll have to trust me that this alteration worked out until I finish the skirt (and then take some photos of it once I have a matching top).

If any of the newbie sewers out there have any questions, be sure to leave me a comment.

In: Sewing Tutorials

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