craftgrrl | Remodeled velvet skirt

So I scored a really nice deep pile, red & black velvet skirt at ye olde store of thrifte.

It had potential, even if the scalloped hem, with the slight ruching at the bottom gave the skirt a distinct, uh, gothic gunny sack appearance when worn.

I held onto this skirt trying to figure out what to do with it for about a month until one day inspiration struck.
Diaphanous gussets going down the seams!

Fortunately I had enough misc pieces of a black silk chiffon to do the job.
I cut long strips, about 8" wide, then tapered the tops at a 60 degree angle, and the bottoms at a sharper 30 degree angle so they would make nice wicked points at the ends.

You would think any problems I had would have been either ruffling the chiffon, or even sewing the panels onto such a deep pile velvet.
Nope.

My problem was with the rolled edge hems.
Which despite using my serger on the rolled edge function, with the proper needle, still had the stitching pulling away after the fact in certain areas.
So, I ended up properly rolling the seams over top of that with my regular machine by hand, using a piping foot, and a very small zig zag stitch to hold the seams closed.
It got rid of some of the crinkly lettuce edged ness of it, giving the edges more stiffness, but, it's better than fraying hems any day in my book.

After I finished hemming all 6 pieces.....twice.....

I then ruffled the raw edges with my ruffle foot at, I think a no 1 ruffle, at every stitch.

Then I sewed them onto the pre existing seams, stopping at the bottom right before where the ruching starts, flipped the chiffon over the raw edge, and then sewed over the raw ends creating a topstitched french seam of sorts.

Took a couple hours, but it was worth the work.

At least for my tastes it is.

And there you have it.

**Some of the chiffon bits look like they have pulls or whatnot, they don't, it's just a combination of the stiffer hems, and the ruffles being a bit smushed from being in my closet until I had time to take proper photos.**

Ta!

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