One of best moments in life as a sewist is when you walk into a fabric store and fall in love with something entirely unexpected. In this case, that whirlwind romance gave birth to this wonderfully easy pleated skirt. I almost feel guilty passing this off as a make because it was just too damn easy!

An Amsterdam afternoon

A few weeks ago, my mother-in-law came to visit from France, so we took a day trip to Amsterdam. While we didn’t have time to explore all the fabric shopping options in Amsterdam, I did duck into A. Boeken on Nieuwe Hoogstraat.

Next time you are in Amsterdam, I highly recommend checking out Nieuwe Hoogstraat and its surrounds. It’s a really gorgeous little street, filled with quirky and quality shops. It’s one of my favourite little corners in a city famous for being filled with great little corners. It’s also the perfect compromise shopping destination for my husband and I: a fabric store for me, a vinyl store for him. Everyone goes home happy.

A. Boeken is small, but very cute. Every centimetre of its extremely high ceiling is jam-packed with fabrics – piled layer upon layer. I spent quite some time that afternoon perched on a ladder exploring some of the offerings “on high” (so much time, in fact, that someone assumed I was staff and demanded that I cut her fabric!).

Your fabric shopping philosophy

So, what’s your personal code of ethics when entering the den of temptation that is a fabric store (apart from, don’t-stay-so-long-that-people-assume-you-work-there)?

I used to walk into a store and buy whatever I thought was pretty, even if I didn’t know what it would become. That resulted in a large stash, without any strategy or cohesion. It took me a long time to sew through some of my earliest fabric hauls. By the time, I approached a fabric 6 months after I had bought it, sometimes the spark had gone.

As a result, I try to restrain myself. Unless I am somewhere out-of-the-ordinary, I try to know before I walk into the store what it is that I hope to walk out with. So, walking out with this fabric did actually violate my fabric shopping philosophy. But every sewist needs to bend the rules sometimes.

Fabric crush

Now, getting back to my easy pleated skirt.

I didn’t actually know that pre-pleated fabric even existed until I walked in and saw this.

Stripes.

Flowers.

Pleats.

OH MY!

It was most definitely love at first sight.

But love doesn’t come cheap. 40 euros per metre is way more than I am usually willing to spend on fabric. But, it was enormously wide and I would only need a metre. And, my lovely mother-in-law decided to treat me to it.

Merci, Mamie!

Pre-pleated fabric – oh sew easy!

I have always loved pleated skirts and have no problems making skirts that include pleats for shopping. But I have been too scared to tackle a fully pleated skirt because I knew that I wouldn’t have the patience to do it properly.

Pleat, pleat, repeat.

And measurements where millimetres actually matter. Ughhh!

The revelation of pre-pleated fabric has changed everything.

When I got this fabric home, I couldn’t stop just wrapping it around myself – draping it this way and that. It looked good – whatever I did to it! I could have just wrapped a belt around it and called it a strapless dress.

Keep it simple stupid

I felt that this fabric needed no embellishment. And, of course, it was very delicate. Frankly, I was too scared to even insert any kind of closure as I wasn’t sure it could handle it without the pleats falling out or some other kind of damage.

So, I decided on an easy elastic waisted pleated skirt. Have any of you worked with a transparent, delicate, pre-pleated fabric before? Can it handle zippers and fiddly bits or did I make the right call keeping it simple?

The only “decision” I had to make was whether to encase my waist elastic or keep it exposed. In the end, I chose the latter, as I really liked the width of the elastic I’d found. Plus, the pragmatist in me figured that if I didn’t like the end result, I could always take off the elastic and insert an encased elastic band, with nothing lost.

And, for all you sew curious peeps out there, who, like me, may not have encountered pre-pleated fabric before, the best thing about it is that it comes pre-hemmed! Your selvedges are actually your already-finished hems and the usual rule that you lay your fabric out selvedge-to-selvedge to cut does not apply. The only downside is that you need to know how long you want your skirt to be when you put it together because cutting excess length of the bottom isn’t really an option.

For tips on working with this entirely unknown pre-pleated specimen I, of course, turned to the online sewing community. I am very grateful for this lovely post by the Sew Convert. Isn’t her green pleated fabric to die for?

Snip, quick, sew

This easy pleated skirt is the quickest thing I have ever made. I was able to literally just cut my metre of fabric in half and, voilà, I had my back and my front pieces. I joined them together (French seamed), lined it with a generic knit lining fabric, attached some wide navy elastic and that’s it!

The only step of this easy pleated skirt that required any concentration was basting the pleats in place before attaching it to the waistband. This required lots of stopping and starting and folding, but wasn’t difficult.

I love the simplicity of the skirt and I think it looks great compared to the zero effort that it took to make it.

A RTW vibe?

This easy pleated skirt made me reflect about the different elements that make up a make. Sometimes, the pattern takes centre-stage and the beauty is in the cut or the details or the clever construction. But, in some garments, it’s all about a beautiful fabric and not much else is needed.

When I look at this easy pleated skirt, I feel like that it looks very RTW. This made me reflect on some of the RTW pieces in my wardrobe that I reach for the most. My highest rotation pieces all have the same thing in common: there is something very interesting about the fabric. Maybe it is a knit of an exceptionally sturdy quality or a beautifully-used border print or multiple layers used to create a unique textured finish. Those RTW pieces that I still reach for, despite all the hand-made alternatives available to me, are items where an exceptional fabric chines through.

And letting an exceptional fabric shine is exactly what easy pleated skirt is all about!