My new waist

Now where was I?  Oh that's right, making a skirt.  The weekend was hot, I should have finished the skirt and been wearing it, but it's still in the sewing room...

So in my last post I was encasing the raw edge of the waist of the skirt with bias binding tape.  The shirring elastic alone was not going to cut it in terms of keeping the skirt comfortably on my waist so I needed to add a bit of stronger elastic too.  Guess what?  The binding tape doubles as a casing for a piece of elastic.  Remember this lonely piece of elastic that came out of the dress when I unpicked it? 

It went straight back into the casing at the waistline and hey presto, waist band of skirt finished and very comfortable.

Now because the new waist band used to be up around the bodice part of the old dress the skirt is naturally too long!

To approximate how long a long skirt should be on myself I rather inexpertly dropped my tape measure from my waist down towards the ground and rather expertly (if I do say so myself) held it down with my toes while I documented it photographically - can you read that?  Its about 40 inches.

The skirt is currently about 42 inches long from waist to hem so it looks like I have a few inches to chop off the bottom before sewing a new hem.  I'm sure there's a way more professional method of working this out than the way I did it!

Hopefully I'll soon be able to show you some pictures of me wearing it rather than sewing it.