Sewing 101 Week 5: Pintucks

Welcome to week # 5 of:

You can find weeks 1-4 HERE.

Today I want to talk about pin tucks -I confess, that I am a little in love with them.  Check out my Pinterest Pin Tuck Board.  Pin tucks are when you make a narrow fold purely for decorative purposes.  They can be a little tedious, but are not difficult and add a little special touch to garments. 

Loft Pintuck Skirt 

I love this skirt from The Loft.  It is $59.50 and sold out super fast-b/c it is adorable.   I thought it would be a great skirt to knock-off for this week's lesson.

Choosing fabric: Pin tucking will add extra weight to your garment, so pick something light, that will form a crisp fold when ironed.  I would avoid large patterns.  I choose a bright blue summer linen blend. My fabric was 58 inches wide, so I only needed 1 1/4 yards.  I had a coupon so it cost me a little over $8.


To figure out how much fabric you need, we have to do math.  (Don't freak out  it's easy math).
1. Decide how long you want the finished skirt to be. Ours was 22 inches.
2. Add 2 inches for the waist band and 2 inches for the hem.
3. Add 1/2 inch for each pintuck.  I did 11 pintucks, so I added 5.5 inches.
 This gives me a total length of 31.5 inches




4. To find the width, measure your waist. My daughter's is 26. If you want it a little fuller than the original add a few inches. (I added 8)


5. Cut 2 pieces of fabric your desired length and width.
Mine were 35 wide and 31.5 inches long.


We are basically going to be making the skirt from week 2. ( I did use 1 inch elastic this time). So go  make that skirt and then come back here and I'll show you how to make pin-tucks.  

 Welcome Back!  Let's continue.

Decide where you want your pintucks. Place pins to mark it all the way around the skirt.

 Now fold the fabric over the pins. Iron in place.

 Then, remove the pins and place on top to hold it into place. (I lost the pic of the next step-sorry).  Line up the edge that you just pinned with the edge of your presser foot on your machine. Sew all the way around the skirt.  This will give you a 1/4 inch pin tuck

Finally, I iron pin tucks toward the bottom of the skirt. Measure, pin, sew, iron repeat until you are done.


 FYI: I began my next row 3/4 of an inch underneath the first. You will need to adjust your measurements depending on the length of the skirt, but here they are for a 22 inch long finished skirt.

FYI #2, it takes me about 10 minutes for each pin tuck, so you may just want to start w/ a few (after 11 rows, I decided The Loft skirt was a real bargain.  You can also make wider or narrower pin tucks, by adjusting your seam allowance. 

To finish,  cut a strip of fabric for the bow. Fold in half, sew and turn inside out. Sew on skirt.


Please let me know if anything was unclear, but hopefully you just made a really cute skirt.


My daughter declared this her favorite thing I've ever made and she is going to wear this on Easter Sunday. I'll post a pic of her later. 
Update: Easter morning pics:

To see where I link up or to add your party, please click here.



I feel super cool that this project was featured at:










thanks for the shout-out!