I found it helpful to mark the stitching line on the top of the skirt where the elastic will be sewn. It was too hard for me to try and manage stretching elastic and keeping track of where the elastic should be sewn on the fabric. Drawing in that stitching line gave me a guide for this.
In the Moneta sew along, the instructions are to divide the elastic into five parts. I think that is fine if you have a relatively small waist, but mine is not and so I had to stretch the elastic over very long distances, which resulted in some uneven elastic attachment in the first dress I made. So I did the five marks and then found the middle of each of the five segments and marked them. I found the middle of the official anchoring points and marked them.
So here we see I have less length to stretch the elastic. This was quite successful.
I also found it easier to not sew the elastic in a circle before pinning it to the skirt. Here’s one end here.
Then I just pinned the other end over the first, matching my ending places. This way I could start at that point and do some firm back stitching to join the circle of elastic right to the skirt.
I have no idea if this is a correct technique, but I found it easiest to stretch my segment out so the elastic pulled tight against the fabric and then plop my fingers down on the sewing machine, keeping the elastic taut. I then sew until my fingers hit the presser foot and repeated the stretching process. Because I have more than five points of contact between elastic and skirt, this worked well.
