How To: Tighten an Elastic Waistband in 5 Easy Steps

This is the lazy girl's guide to tightening the elastic on that loose skirt! It's also a guide for those, who, like me cannot sew very well. Guys, I'm rubbish at sewing but I wanted to tighten the skirt regardless haha.

Read on for the How To!

I recently made an online purchase at Choies clothing and amongst the things I ordered was a high waisted "leather" midi skirt, I'd been looking for one for a while. 

So imagine my delight when I stumbled across this skirt on Choies, I happily ordered it and was grossly disappointed when it finally came. I'd, as I discovered when I tried it on, overestimated the size of my waist (it looks like I've lost an inch since coming to Korea).

Here I was with a skirt that was too big and I didn't want to return it (returning things online is too much hassle for me, plus it's never worked out very well for me when I have tried), I decided to take matters into my own hands. 

I'm going to show you how I readjusted my skirt without using a sewing machine, bearing in mind that I'd never done it before haha. 

You'll need 3 things:

1. A safety pin (or 2)
2. Needle and thread (if you have a sewing machine you might as well use it), make sure to choose thread that's the same colour as the garment
3. Scissors, if you have a seam ripper use it!

Step 1: Put the skirt on, it's best this way so you can see what fit you're trying to achieve.

I put the skirt on inside out because I'm not great at sewing and I knew there was a high chance that when I resewed the seam it was going to look bad. 

Step 2: Cut the seam of the skirt carefully, making sure not to cut the elastic.

Step 3: Pull out the elastic then measure how much you want to decrease the waistline. Then fold the band at your chosen measurement and secure it with a safety pin.

Make sure you take off the skirt (you should still be able to take it off without much difficulty).

Step 4: Sew the elastic band closed where you secured the safety pin. 

As you can see I can't sew well ('-_-)

Step 5: Sew the seam back up!

(Guys I'm not going to lie, you can see from my pictures that I don't sew very well so I decided to safety pin the seam, plus I might decide to tighten the waistband again in the future!

BEFORE

AFTER

Thanks for reading people! I hope this helps you if you're looking to DIY your clothes, if not, I hope this was at least entertaining haha!