Taking in an elastic waist skirt

My sister gave me this skirt and I love it! The only problem is that the waist is way too big. Luckily I know how to fix it. In this post I’ll show you what I do when I’m taking in an elastic waist skirt.

Since this is an elastic waist skirt, I’m just planning to get to the elastic and tighten it. If the elastic was old/bad, or would replace the elastic instead. The first step is to carefully unpick about a two inch strip in the waistband.

Next, I pulled the elastic out of the waistband and tried on the skirt. I pulled the elastic so it was tight enough and used a safety pin to hold the elastic in place.

Then, I sewed along the elastic to shorten it. I sewed a straight line, cut the elastic about 1/4 inch away and then used a zig zag stitch to get the elastic to lay flat.

Last, I tucked the elastic back in and sewed the waistband back up. To sew up the waistband, I used my zig zag stitch to keep the fabric from unraveling, then used a straight stitch along the topstitch line that the rest of the skirt had.