Skirt tutorial

Last night I put together this skirt for my daughter out of some scrap fabric. I used less than a 1/2 of a yard of fabric. Here is a quick tutorial



Cut the fabric from salvage to salvage in the lengths shown above. (they are folded in half in the picture) So, your main piece (flower fabric) is salvage to salvage x 7" and so on.

Pin the three inch piece to the 7 inch piece together, right sides facing. Sew them together with a straight stitch. If you are lucky enough to have a serger, serge your edges now. If you are unlucky to have a serger (like me), just zig zag stitch your seams together.



Pin the 4 inch piece to the other side of the main piece, right sides together and straight stitch together, followed by a serged edge or a zig zag stitch.



Pin the raw edges together, right sides facing.


Because your pieces are cut right to the salvage edge, make sure that when you sew your seam, you don't have any of the salvage edge coming through. Sew with a straight stitch and finish with your serger or zig zag stitch.



Now get out the iron and ironing board. Don't skip this step!!! Ironing your seams will leave you with a nicer finish on your finished project. On the 4 inch side, iron down 1/4 inch.



Now iron it down in half so that the ironed edge of your fabric hits at your previous seam (where the 4 inch fabric meets the main fabric).



Top stitch this seam, leaving a 1 inch gap to run your elastic.



Now iron down 1/4 on the opposite side (the 3 inch fabric strip).


Now fold that hem over and iron again.


Sew a simple straight stitch.


You should now be left with this. Simply cut a piece of elastic to fit your childs waist and thread it into the 1 inch opening. Sew the elastic together and sew the 1 inch hole closed.

Enjoy this super simple skirt!!!

Re-purposeing: SKIRTS!

Today I re-purposed some clothing and made skirts for Alanna. Sorry for the bad pics.... I took these at night with my point and shoot.

The first one was this dress a friend gave me. You can see that I started cutting this apart prior to the picture. I stopped just to show you what it looked like before. It was just a basic sleeveless dress.


It had a few stains. So, instead of using it for a play dress, I turned it into this skirt.



It was simple. I just cut the top, white part off. Then I folded it over to make a casing for the elastic waist band. You'll notice I left some of the white top on. It has a serged edge and I didn't feel like going through the hassle of folding and ironing since I don't have a serger... yet! :) It made of less steps. Then I just pulled some elastic through and sewed the casing closed.


I cut out the star that was on the top of the dress and put it on the bottom of the new skirt.

The skirt still needs to be ironed... but it's super cute.



The second skirt I made was from an old pair of jeans that I have had for a long time (jeans I hoped to fit into some day but I'm finally being realistic!:)

For this skirt I cut the bottom of both legs off my old jeans. I cut them along the inside, side seam to open them up into to pieces of fabric. I then sewed them up the sides so that the outside side seam would be on the front and the back. When I read that, it's totally confusing. I'll do a tutorial on this. The top is just elastic. It took me about 15 minutes! I don't think we've seen the last of this skirt though. Embellishing of some kind is definitely in it's future.

Tomorrow... pants for Abram!