Couture techniques in skirt-making

I decided to make a skirt using as many couture techniques as I could: silk underlining, Hong Kong finishes, couture waistband you name it! This kind of sewing is slow but the result is a skirt that keeps its shape and doesn’t wrinkle or stick to your legs. The more I sew, the more I think that it is better to sew slowly and concentrate on good quality to make garments that last for years and years.

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Good book resources for couture techniques

Everyone always asks me where they could learn the techniques I have used. I have collected a big pile of useful books on couture sewing and tailoring techniques. For the techniques shown in the video, I recommend the following three books:

Lynda Maynard, The dressmaker’s handbook of couture sewing techniques is a good basic book what comes to couture sewing techniques.

Lorna Knight, Complete dressmaking skills seems to have a new edition and the old one I have is not available anymore. The new edition seems to have links to videos that demonstrate the techniques in the book, which sounds very useful.

Roberta C. Carr: Couture… the art of fine sewing

The first two books have partly the same stuff but Complete dressmaking skills is better for beginners as it has lots of basic garment construction techniques as well. Roberta Carr’s book is more detail-focused but it has stuff in there that the other two don’t cover.

I want to add a fourth book to this list. Classic tailoring techniques – a construction guide for women’s wear by Roberto Cabrera and Patricia Flaherty Meyers may be almost impossible to find as a hardback but the paperback version is being sold on Amazon. This book is a sister book to Classic tailoring techniques – a construction guide for men’s wear by Roberto Cabrera and is a must for anyone wanting to learn about tailoring techniques in women’s garments.

Pictures of the finished couture skirt

Here is the skirt from the front. The skirt goes beautifully with the couture jacket I made some time ago!

I have worn this skirt already for several weeks and I have noticed what a difference a silk organza underlining makes as I haven’t needed to iron the skirt at all! This is due to organza preventing the skirt from wrinkling badly. I was a bit worried that the three layers of fabric would make the skirt too warm but I shouldn’t have worried.

Thank you for reading and see you soon! Happy sewing!

Katja