Maternity wrap skirt

This is a skirt made from the pattern available on this site under the "maternity" section. I guessed I would be a large, not a small, so I sized up the pattern to fit me, and that made the overall belt length for me a little over 3 meters.

While sewing it according to the instructions on the website, I had a thought... 3 meters of belt turning with your fingers and a chopstick takes a really long time, after all. This is not the technique used in the photo of this skirt, but I have made cloth belts like this before so it does work.

To avoid the hours of turning if you need a long belt, you have to first accept that you don't mind seeing topstitching on your belt. If you don't, then:

Cut your belt fabric with a nice seam allowance, I like 1.5cm or 5/8" personally. Take your belt fabric and fold in half, WRONG sides together, so you can see the RIGHT side of your fabric. Fold under your seam allowance on the open sides of the belt. This means, fold the seam allowance on both sides towards the INSIDE of the belt, facing each other, leaving a nice clean outer edge on both sides of the belt. Now iron that sucker down. Now your belt should look nice and neat, with one seam at the bottom of it. Topstitch along the open fold to seal it closed, if you can manage it about 1 mm away. If you want a "matching" belt or are doing this on the sides, too, then you can also topstitch along the top of the belt to make it match, but that's just decorative. Then continue sewing as directed, thereby finishing this skirt in much less time if you're a size large. ;-)

This red skirt was made out of old linen curtains, every last bit of it. So very comfortable, great way to recycle old materials - especially solids with "questionable" patterns. :)