Easy Skirts - Part 3 Flared and part circular skirts

 I've already told you about two other types of skirts that are pretty easy to make, without a pattern, i.e. gathered skirts, and circular skirts. This is a fully circular skirt. 

This is a type of flared skirt - it is a smaller fraction of a circle, rather than a complete circle.

There are several reasons why you might opt for a part circle. So in this post, I'll explore those, and show you an easy way to make them.

Easy Skirts - Part 2 - Circular skirts.

In my first post about easy skirts for girls, I wrote about gathered skirts. I think they are the simplest to make, use very little fabric, and don't need a pattern. But there are other types of skirt which are also pretty easy to make, and many of them can loosely come under a heading of circular and flared skirts. The main difference is that gathered skirts are usually made of a simple rectangle of fabric, so that there is as much fabric at the waistline as at the bottom hem. This can sometimes make them seem a bit bulky at the top. In contrast, a fully circular skirt will be a complete circle (often likened to a doughnut) so it has a wide hem and not too much fabric at the top. But you can also make skirts I'm calling 'flared' as a sort of catchall. They are some fraction of a circle, three-quarters, half, or even just a quarter. They will all have more fabric at the hem than at the waistine.

This is a gathered skirt:

This is a fully circular skirt:

And these two are flared skirts. I'll cover flared skirts in part three.

Many such skirts can also be made without an expensive pattern, if you are prepared to make a few measurements and draw a pattern for yourself. But you can also get patterns if that's what you prefer to work with.

Sew a Little Seam Movie Night PJs pattern review

I had this jersey fabric with large dinosaurs* that had been picked out by my grand-daughter for a pair of pyjamas for her birthday. So all I needed now was a pattern! I had two PDF patterns, both freebies, and I wasn't sure which to use. So I asked a question in a Facebook group I belong to, the Baby and Kids PDF Sewing Patterns Group: "Opinions please - Ellie and Mac Grow with Me pyjamas, or Sew A Little Seam Movie Night pyjamas - for an size 8-10 year old and a 3-4 year old? And why?"

* It's called Stof of Denmark Avalana Organic Jersey – Dinosaurs

I fully expected to get views in favour of both, but in fact the responses were almost all for the Sew a Liitle Seam Movie Night pyjamas, so that made my decision a lot easier! And below, you can find out how I got on, and whether I agreed with those views.

Sweatshirt Tunic from Life Sew Savory - a review and a fun idea

 I'd been looking at ways of using up some of the multiple colours of fleece scraps in my stash, and just in time, along came Emily Thompson of Life Sew Savory's with her great Sweatshirt Tunic pattern. I'd had an idea for some time of doing something like a rainbow because I had so many colours, and hence the sunburst was born. I think the Life Sew Savory pattern works really well.

You can find out how to make it here (or anything with a sunburst  design).

Enlarging a pattern - a tutorial

You know how frustrating it is when the pattern you love doesn't quite go up to a big enough size? It is sometimes possible to enlarge it a bit,  though I don't recommend trying to alter a newborn pattern to fit a ten year old, or a 7 year-old pattern to a women's XL. In this post, I'll show you how to make something a size or two larger. 

Easy Skirts - Part 1 - Gathered skirts

 Some skirts are so easy to make, I'm amazed when I see paid-for "patterns" for very basic skirts. In fairness, there are also a lot of people who provide a pattern and tutorial free, as a come-on for their paid-for patterns. I don't have anything to sell, so I'm just going to tell you how to make easy skirts for girls, with no charge! And I'll also suggest a few embellishments to make them fancier, if the basics are just too basic for you. Here are just a few of the many, many skirts that I've made for my grandchildren over the past few years,

This will be a short series of posts on how to make simple skirts, and for this the first, on gathered skirts, read on. (Links to the others at the end.)