Pink Pleated Maxi Skirt

This pink pleated maxi skirt was a quick-and-simple project that wasn’t actually all that quick to sew up. But I’m happy with the time spent on it as I think it will be a wardrobe staple. Ok, so I admit that sheer striped pepto-bismol-pink maxi skirts aren’t wardrobe staples for everyone. But it will be for me!

I used a pink striped sheer fabric that I just bought super-duper cheap (somewhere between $2-3/yd). I immediately thought of making exactly this skirt when I bought this fabric, and I have a yard left to whip up a blouse someday. The stripes are actually strips of self fabric pre-sewn on.

To make this into a skirt, I pinched out a pleat at the top between every strip of self-fabric. I sewed the pleat for 6-8″, back-tacking at the bottom, and left the bottom of the pleat open. I didn’t worry about getting the pleat the exact same size or length as I like the more organic look it leaves and the sanity that it saved. To finish the waist I sewed the front and lining right sides together along the waist seam, serged off the excess fabric, turned the lining to the inside, and topstitched the front and back in place. Very simple.

For the lining, I used a white synthetic crepe that I had in my stash (so even though I bought fabric for the skirt, it’s still stashbusting!). Instead of making a ton of small pleats as the front, I made 6 large box pleats of about 6″ each on both front and back. This brought the 60″ fabric to the same width as the front fabric after the pleats. I then trimmed the sides to fit. I ended up cutting off something like 3″ from each side of front and back.

I put an invisible zipper on one side. To make the fabric the right shape (i.e. not just a rectangle), I angled both sides seams. I also hid a couple small darts amongst the pleating in the back. This makes the skirt fitted from just-below-navel through about 6″, flowing out above my hips. The width at the bottom is pretty close to the width of fabric (60″) so there’s plenty of room to spin about like a pretty-pretty-princess!