in this video I'm going to show you how to do a classic waistband for the top of your skirt or pants and you'll see that it has a folded edge here at the top with a top stitch down here at the bottom and it's usually meant for garments that have a zipper closure closure which I have right here and one side will overlap so you can do a fastener closure of your choice either a button a hook-and-eye or any other type of closure that you have on the inside here it's been hand sewed closed so it gives it a nice clean finished look to your garment so let's get started so in order to make your waistband you're going to have one pattern piece that's going to come with your pattern and this is one that I made myself because I'm making my own skirt and regardless of the size mine is small but regardless of the size you're making you're going to follow these same basic steps first you're going to cut out one in your fabric and then you're going to cut out one in your interfacing so here our pattern will tell you which size interfacing or which way interfacing to use I'm just using a light weight for mine but this is what you want to make sure we want to make sure that the interfacing matches up to our fabric piece so this is going the same size or the same direction as this and even though it looks symmetrical these marks aren't actually symmetrical it's a little bit longer on one end than it is on the other so what I'm going to do is I'm going to make sure that my interfacing has the fusible side down so the side with the bubble is facing down towards table and the soft side is facing up towards me so I have my pattern piece the same way I have my fabric and this is the wrong side of my fabric I'm just going to take it and I'm going to place it onto my interfacing and now I'm going to cut it out now that also the thing about the interface is you tip like it typically want to make it a little bit smaller than your fabric piece because you're going to have a seam allowance here and you don't really need your interfacing on the seam lap so once you cut it out you can cut it out to make it a little bit smaller so I'm just going to go ahead and pin and cut it out but once I'm done with it I should just be able to lift it up and stick it right on to my Peas my waistband piece right here and it should fit perfectly so I go ahead and pin this and cut it out and then we'll move on to applying the interfacing to our waistband so I have my waistband here here's the fabric wrong side up and here's my interfacing so you'll fill one side has the bubbles that is the fusible part and that goes facedown on the wrong side of my waistband here and you'll see I made it a little bit shorter than the actual waistband fabric so that's pretty good and then I'm going to get my damp cloth carefully lay it over my piece a little bit more damp and with a very hot iron or depending on the type of fabric you're doing and if you're doing a synthetic fabric then you don't have to have the iron is hot but I'm doing a cotton so I want a hot iron and I'm going to carefully lift it up and go on the next piece okay and now my interface is applied to my fabric and then we can start working on attaching it to our skirt or pants or whatever you need a waistband for so what we're going to do first though is we're going to fold over the edge the seam allowance of whatever your project is so for mine mine's 1/2 edge and I'm only going to do it on one side and the way if it would side it is is one side from I have my first notch here so from the notch to the edge of the fabric should be shorter on one side so I'm just going to measure to the side and your pattern piece could indicate which side that's going to be so that's a 3 and 3/4 and then I'm going to measure from this side to this edge of this notch and this is about 4 and 1/2 so this is the shorter side and the reason we're folding it is because this is going to be the edge of one side of our waistband and we wanted to have a nice clean edge of a fold here instead of just leaving it like this and they're going to have a rough edge the other side is longer because this is a site that's going to overlap with this side of the waistband so you can apply your faster like a button or a hook and eye or something like that so once I have this folded my seam allowance length for me is a half an inch I'm then going to iron it like that so now we're going to pin one edge of our waistband to the top edge of our garment so I'm working on a skirt right here so it's going to go right along this edge and the side that's going to go up on the edge is the side that has the notches because that's going to match up with certain points along the edge of your garment here now I have my side with the fold and that's going to match up with one side here and I'm doing it on the left side of the garment or I guess it would be my right side now that just means it's going to overlap the other side of the waistband on over on this side and a lot of garments I think actually go on this side but I'm left-handed so I always do everything backwards it doesn't really matter you're making your own clothes you can break the rules the main point is is that your notches match up so you have your Center notch and it should match up with your center of your skirt I drew my little notch here at the center so I'm going to pin that okay and then my other notch here is going to match up with the side seam of my skirt so I'm going to pin that area and the other notch matches up with the other side seam so I'm going to find my side seam here and I'm going to put my notch here here's the other edge of my skirt and the other edge so you see here this overlaps which is fine because we want it to overlap since we need it to overlap with this other side here so now I'm just going to finish pinning this and then what we're going to do is we're going to do our seam allowance to sew the top edge of this waistband and my garment so I'm ready to sew my waistband to my skirt now and you'll see that my folded side is lining up with the edge of my zipper and you always want to sew your waistband with a zipper opened so I'm just going to start sewing at the recommended seam allowance of your pattern to fit the back stitch and then once this is sewn on you're going to press it by the waistband being folded out and your seam here your seam allowance being folded up towards the top of the waistband because after that point we're going to top stitch it and this part will be tucked into the inside of the waistband when the waistband is finished so from the inside of the skirt it'll look fairly needs so here's my waistband which has been sewn to the top of my skirt and now what you're going to do is see here's the edge of my seam allowance I'm going to press it up towards my waistband like that so on this side it's going to be nice and smooth and all the seam allowance is going to be pressed towards this way and what we're going to do is we're going to top stitch right along the edge of the waistband here on the waistband side in order to keep all this facing up towards this because once we fold this over that seam allowance will then be covered by your waistband so I'm going to go ahead take it to my iron press it and then I'm going to take it to the machine so we can go ahead and do the top stitch so now I'm going to sell my top stitch right along this edge right along here and it's all been pressed so it should be lying flatly and give you a couple back stitches there and you want to stay as close as you can to the edge without going over and then the next step is we're going to start pressing our other raw edge here under like that I'm going to finish this top stitch and then we'll get to that point so I finished my top stitch here it is right here and here's the long part that extends past the zipper I also tops it right along here so you're going to extend all the way to the edge so now that that's done the next part is like I said before you're going to take this raw edge right here and you're going to fold it under so that's nice and clean on the top there on the right side on the wrong side you see it's been folded over and you're going to want to consult your pattern directions to see what they want but I usually do a quarter of an inch so that's been folded in or a quarter of an inch and then you're going to press it so that's already been pressed the next step here is we're going to work right here on this extended edge I'm going to fold this waistband in half so this is still staying folded and I'm going to meet folded edge to my folded edge now like that I'm going to put a pin there because I'm going to stitch right along here I'm going to stitch a quarter of an inch but you want to check your pattern again to see what they say because I just want to finish this raw edge and then once I stitch that I'm just able to get trim that and then flip it right side out and this will all be tucked under and it will look like this so at that point we're almost done with our waistband so again you're going to fold the waistband in half right side to right side so the folds meet get a pin that and then I'm going to do it just a quick stitch right along the edge at my quarter inch mark so I'm going ahead and I'm going to stitch right along this line at the quarter inch mark and remove my pin here for me because my waistband isn't very big it doesn't take very long at all okay so I'm just going to take this out of here and depending on how big your waistband is you're going to want to trim your seam allowance here so it's a quarter-inch mine is already there but you're also going to want to clip this corner right here without clipping your stitch because we're going to turn this now right side out I'm going to fix it but roughly that's how it's going to be obviously you want your line to be straight when my still kind of crooked and in there so I'm going to play with that but as soon as you do that you're going to see how it kind of folds in half again so you're then going to want to press your waistband so wrong side to wrong side so this edge right here of your waistband is going to line up right at your seam right here that you did for your top stitch so you're going to go ahead and just kind of fold that in half to pin it and then you're going to press right at the top of your waistband so you have a nice clean fold here because then the next step is we're going to hand sew this all closed so I'm going to show you how to do that next after I fix my little edge here and then I press this so my waistband has now been folded in half this edge of the fold here is meeting up with our seam that we did or stitching that we did attaching the waistband to the top of our garment here and I want to head and pinned it and pressed it the next step now is we're going to do a slip stitch so we're going to attach from the inner fold of the waistband here to the extra seam allowances to get out so you're never actually going through to the other side of the fabric when you look at the right side of the skirt or your pants the waistband when you're finished you should only see your top stitching so it's basically going to be an invisible stitch closing this off and hiding all our seam allowances here on the inside of the waistband so we're going to start here at the edge where we have the overlap of the waistband and you're going to go all the way across to this edge but then you're also going to go up the side here because this is still open from when we just folded it over so you just continue the slip stitch from this corner up to this edge and then you're done with doing that part of the waistband so we're going to get closer so I can show you how to do the slip stitch so to do the slip stitch I'm going to start with a threaded knotted needle and I'm going to start right here on the inside grabbing my seam allowance here and a little bit of my fabric from this side trying to stay on the inside part of the fold and then tuck my knot inside there there we go alright so I'm on this side now I'm going to grab a little bit on the inside fold on the opposite side and then very gently pull it now this one is going to be hard because we have this fabric that's right in the middle here so now I'm going to the opposite side okay gently pull it and you'll see a slightly start to close once I get to this part where I don't have the seam ons anymore this should close all the way so I'm grabbing the other side and I'm just basically zigzagging between the two sides here see that's closes and so I'm taking a little bit of this side then this side then this side and this side and I'm going to go all along the length of my waistband once I get to the part where my garment is actually attached to the waistband it actually becomes a little bit easier so I finish hand sewing my waistband here and you'll see now that I have this overlaps with this edge of my waistband so at this point is a closure of your choosing sometimes they ask for a button so you would do the buttonhole on the part that overlaps and then the button would go on this side here or you can do a hook and I so you would sew the hook and eye at the edge and then some one here and it would hook together this is just to keep the waistband close after you zip up your zipper but that's it that's the completed waistband and that's all you need to do