So when last we left the skirt, we had a waistband and we had the body of the skirt, and the goal was to join them together.

The way I do that is by first trimming the top of the panels to make them nice and even, then running two lines of the longest, loosest stitches my machine will make all across the top of the skirt. Then I pull on them to gather the fabric to the width I want and carefully slide and adjust those gathers so that the seams on the panels line up with the sections of the waistband just so. Then I pin everything in place and sew it down. In this case I first sewed a couple of passes with thread that matches the fabric (so you won’t see it), then one line of stitching in the shiny yellow thread that you can see from across the room. The fabric is heavy enough (I think skirt has to weigh at least three or four pounds) that I didn’t want anything important held together by just one row of stitching, and the row of nearly invisible stitching will keep the raw edge at the edge o the waist from fraying more than a tiny bit more.

The result is pretty damn delightful if I do say so myself! I’ve got a few little bits of hardware on the way (d rings and a clip to make it easy to put on and secure in place). And once those come and are attached, I’ll do something clever and industrious with an iron to really, thoroughly set everything in place. But I can already tell that this is exactly what I wanted and will be on heavy rotation in my wardrobe for the foreseeable future.