Easy summer skirts for little girls Part 2

Having made a few skirts already this summer, (see this post) I found a pattern / tutorial new to me, and I wanted to give it a try. I liked it so much, I made three! Only two have been given an outing so far the other is en route, but the two that have been around for longer seem to have been popular. And they were very quick and easy to make. 

You can find out more about This Mama Makes Stuff Twirly Whirly Skirt if you read on. It doesn't have to sit as low on the hips as this, but my grand-daughters are all slim, and like their skirt on their hips rather than tight round the waist. You could make a ra-ra skirt for a baby, or a full length adult skirt.

You can make this skirt in any size really, but it does require you to make your own pattern.  It's the This Mama Makes Stuff tutorial. (This link may no longer work. Try this one. )

This is what you end up with following the tutorial instructions. However, if you can't find them (web sites do come and go) you need only two measurements:

• waist measurement x 1.5 / 2 (or waist measurement x 0.75)
• required finished length from below the elastic waistband.

For the top one, my 3 and a half year old grandchild's waist measurement was 50cm. (Between 19.5" and 20".) I made the length 30.5 cm (about 12 inches).

The second one above, for a 4 and a half year old, had a 53cm waist measurement, and I made it a bit longer. I can't remember exactly, but a couple of inches, I'd say! I didn't make a new pattern for this, I just eye-balled it.

Having cut a rectangle of the right size (i.e. 37.5cm x 30.5 cm, in my case), the clever bit is to mark the width into 5 or so sections. (With a larger size, you might make this 6 or more - the tutorial suggests roughly 3" widths, or 7.6 cm. The main thing is to make the sections even in size.)

You then cut through the lines marking the sections until almost the top, and spread them out. You can see that I stuck them on the sheet of newspapers. Again, you need to spread them evenly. Then make the top and bottom into smooth curves, and you are ready to go.

And once you have the pattern, making a skirt is very quick.

For the first two skirts, I followed the tutorial exactly. The pattern is cut on the fold of material so it is double in width.

You make a back seam, and (lacking a serger) I finished my seam with a zigzag stitch. Attach bias tape round the bottom. You can see below, I've chosen some matching bias binding.

(I particularly like the kingfisher bias binding, it has white polka dots.)

I then finished the top edge with a zigzag satich to aovid fraying. Shown below on a different skirt.

Now the only slightly tricky bit. (Well, I find it tricky, though it was easier with the second lot of elastic which I found - more about that below.)

Cut a piece of wide elastic to the child's waist measurement. Do not be generous - if anything you can lose and inch or two, depending on how stretchy the elastic is. Make a seam up the back, forming a circle of the elastic. I oversew with a zigzag stitch to  make it lie nice and flat.

Next, mark both the waistband and the skirt into quarters (I often go for 1/8ths). I use pins in the waistband, but I usually press a little crease with the iron into the material to mark the points. Pin the marks together, starting with the back seam. You'll have quite a lot of baggy fabric in between the pins at this stage.

Then, stretching the elastic as you go, sew the waistband to the skirt using a zig zag stitch.

Here's what it looks like on the outside:

And the inside.

That's it - finished! I told you it was quick and easy. 

I do find attaching a waistband in this way is a bit fiddly, gets better the more you do. I find it works best to pull the elastic both ahead of and after the needle, or you put a lot of strain on the needle.  But it's worth that little bit of fiddling about, because of the speed of the end result. I made both of these for the cousins in an afternoon, including making the pattern.

However, I also think it's very flexible. I wanted to make a third skirt for Fleur, who is not quite 5, but in size 7-8 length. As she isn't really significantly bigger round the waist than her cousin (the blonde one above), I still used the same pattern. She wanted a red skirt. I had lots of bits of red fabric, including a couple of fat quarters, and a bit of red and white stripey fabric left over from her shorts. But no single pieces large enough to make this skirt as one.

(I should point out that what follows changes this a bit from a very quick and easy skirt to something a bit more time-consuming, but I was pleased with the result, and I always welcome the challenge of trying to make something out of what I have in my stash.)

 By folding the pattern piece into quarters, I was able to make a new pattern for a skirt in 8 panels. I got 4 panels from each of my two fat quarters, because with a non-directional print, I was able to reverse the pattern. It was tight, I'll grant you. (Note this is not quite right because the top and bottom line of each piece is actually be curved, but this is just to give you an idea of layout.)

However, because I would have 8 seams instead of two, this would make the waist measurement too small. So I added in little strips of my left over scraps of stripey material.

Here are all my cut out pieces, laid out ready to be pinned and sewn together.

And here is half the skirt sewn together, plus the bias tape and elastic I would be using.

Once all the pieces were sewn together, I just continued with adding the bias tape round the bottom. I should add that I was very disappointed with this so-called double-fold bias binding tape when I bought it (off the internet). As you can see, it was so cheap quality as to be virtually see through. And it wasn't fully folded, using double the width of the finished tape. It had just a bare 1/8th of an inch (2mm) fold either side.

Well, never say die, I couldn't afford to waste it, as I'd had bought several metres. So I had to use it by attaching further from the edge, so once folded back it completely encased the fabric.

As usual, I attached it to the inside first, then folded it back to the outside for a neater finish. 

I mentioned elastic earlier. I had struggled to find wide elastic in the UK, so initially I bought some from Strapcrafts in the US off the internet. It was very reasonably priced, and the postage was remarkably modest too, at $3 for a big pack of seven different colours. But this was not the right product for my needs, it just wasn't very stretchy, and I had to make narrower skirts, I just couldn't gather enough material into the rather stiff elastic. This was for my springtime skirts, made with knit fabric.

Honestly, I would still prefer to buy haberdashery and fabrics from a regular store, then I wouldn't have made that mistake, because I would have been able to 'examine the goods' first. But so many stores have closed, and those that remain only carry a limited range - hence my need to turn to the internet.

Anyway, this time around, I searched again, and I found a supplier working in the UK, selling Prym waistband elastic on eBay. More expensive than the US supplier (even with the postage), and quite a bit narrower. But when it arrived, is was much softer and more stretchy, so I ordered more colours. It's also sold by the metre rather than by the yard, so I can get two 50cm waistbands out of it instead of only 1! Bonus. All of the 3 skirts on this page use the new elastic, in purple, lime green, and red.

The finished red and white skirt:

Just a footnote: I found another pattern I'm keen to try when I get a chance. It's for a 'Monkey Bar Skirt', or a type of 'skort'. from Crafter Hours Blog. It seems a good solution to my dress refusenik grand-daughter. If I get round to it, I'll write it up!