Reducing Skirt Waist Ease

You all likely know that you can use your Dress Kit Skirt pattern to sew stand-alone skirts.  But in doing so, we need to address the waist ease that's allowed in the pattern.  Keep in mind that the waist ease in the bodice is 1" (2.5 cm), so when you sew the skirt together with the bodice for either a one or two piece dress, the skirt waist also needs to end up with 1" (2.5 cm) of waist ease, which of course, it does.

But now you'd like to use the skirt pattern as a stand-alone skirt.  The 1" (2.5 cm) of wearing ease is too much.  You are going to want to reduce the finished amount of ease to approximately 1/2" (1.3 cm).  When the darts are sewn in position, that's plenty of ease to tuck in a blouse or lightweight sweater.

Here's a short video to actually show you the process.

As I've said many times, how much wearing ease you actually end up with is very personal preference.  You may want more or less ease, but at least now you know the process.

Also remember that there are written instructions in your Dress Kit instruction book on page 29.

Happy fitting & sewing!