Easy Skirt Tutorial

Thanks for all your helpful comments on my last post re the crochet urge, I am now picking colours and will blog as soon as some wool arrives :-)

Now this blog post comes after chatting to a friend some time ago about a skirt I made little Sweetpea.  I promised to do her a photo tutorial of it but as always it has taken me some time to get around to doing this.  I made this skirt back in August - how does time fly that fast! 

I saw this lovely skirt design on Patch Fabrics site and just had to buy the fabric to make Sweetpea one - she is still in love with ladybirds so she loves this skirt.

So here we go.  You will need some fabric of your choice, 1 1/2 meters of ribbon and 1 1/2 meters of ric-rac.

First measure the length you would like the skirt to be and add 2 " to that for the seams.  Lay out your fabric - you will be using the whole width of the fabric selvedge to selvedge (this is the part of the fabric where the manufacturer prints the fabric info on).  Measure the length you want the skirt to be and cut along there.

Now get some lovely ribbon and pin it along the bottom edge of the fabric on the reverse side.

Now sew along the top of this ribbon all the way along to fix it to the skirt.

Now you need to fold the ribbon back over so it faces the right side of the fabric - didn't take a photo sorry :-(  Your sewing will be along the bottom edge of the ribbon now.  Sew along the new top of the ribbon, this will lock in the edge of the fabric and stop any fraying.

Now sew the ric-rac into place, I popped it a couple of inches about the ribbon but you can pick where you want it.  It may be an idea to pop it in place with a few dots of fabric glue to make it easier to sew.

Now fold the fabric in half so that the right sides are facing in (e.g. your pretty pattern is not showing on the outside anymore) and pin along the selvedge.  Your ribbon should be along the bottom on the inside.  Sew along the pinned area with roughly a 1/2 inch seam - make sure you sew so that no selvedge is showing.

Now make sure your seem is open to make for a neater finish (it isn't the end of the world if you forget though :-)).  Now for the waist.  Keeping the skirt facing wrong side out fold over the top edge 1/2 inch.

Fold it over again 7/8 inch (or just over 1/2 inch in English :-))  This will seal in the edge again to stop fraying and make a nice hidden area for your elastic.  I iron my seams into place to make it easier to sew.

Now sew along the bottom edge of this seam but leave an area where you will be threading your elastic through.

This is where you will thread the elastic through.  Now measure your child's waist and take off a couple of cm's for the elastic measurement - I always test the length whilst it is on her too (be careful to avoid bungee episodes though :-)).  Now pop a safety pin on the end of your elastic and feed it through the the hole and around the seam.  I pin the other end to the skirt too so I don't end up taking the elastic all the way through and out again :-)

Now whilst doing all this remember to keep an eye on the future owner of this gorgeous skirt, if not you may find this sort of thing happens .....

Yogurt everywhere, apparently she became suddenly hungry and helped herself !

When you have threaded the elastic through sew it together and then sew the hole shut - yey one new skirt!

Yey I did it!

Back in May I was lucky enough to win a meter of fabric from the lovely Claire's Patch Fabrics facebook page.  As I am still borrowing my friends sewing machine I really wanted some fabric to make little Sweetpea a skirt out of.  Claire was not only kind enough to give me the fabric (click the link above, she has some scrummy fabric) but she also gave me a link to a skirt tutorial that she said was easy - click here for info.

So the fabric arrived and it was gorgeous, in fact it was too gorgeous as it has taken me this long to pluck up the courage to cut into it :-)  Well last night was the night I decided that yes I could cut the fabric and yes I could get that sewing machine whirring !

I printed off the instructions, read them, re-read them, tried to make sense of some of the sewing jargon and got on with it.  It was quite easy, I think the hardest part was trying to get everything straight and then adding the ribbon at the end (which I would personally add at the beginning in future - not sure if there is a reason why it is added at the end as I am no seamstress :-)).  Also another hard part was getting little Sweetpea to stay still to check the elastic was the right length for her ickle belly - she ran off when I was trying to do this and nearly bungeed back down the corridor whilst nearly breaking the stitching I had just done!

It came out really well (well for someone who has never sewn a skirt before),  and I love the ribbon detail at the base of the skirt.

My sewing was pretty straight but I do need to work on those endings where you have to go back and forth to lock in the stitches, they are rather hard to get perfect.

This is where the elastic went in and the bungee incident happened lol, not easy holding an excited youngster still whilst checking the elastic length.

But this is one happy little girl.  Last night I finished it at about 10pm, first thing this morning she was up with her jim-jam top on and her new skirt, she had to put it on right away! :-)

I am really chuffed that I finally did it !