We’ll be attending my little brother’s wedding next month (yay!) so I made new skirts for my girls to wear. After poking around online, I decided I wanted to use this tutorial as the basis for what I’d do.
At Joann’s I walked past the tulle and there was some in the same gray color as the fabric I’d picked. I knew I had to use it in the skirt somehow, so here’s what I did.
I bought 1 1/2 yards of gray fabric and was able to get both girls skirts out of it.
I didn’t measure everything at the beginning, I just kind of checked as I went along. Here are the measurements of all the strips for both skirts. You can see there was no equation for figuring things out, though each layer is approximately 1.5 times the length of the previous one.
Meagan’s (size 5)
29×5 inches
42 x 5 inches Tulle–42 x 6 inches
66 x 5 inches
finished length 12 inches
Emily’s (size 7)
37 x 6 inches
57 x 6 inches Tulle 57 x 6 inches
85 x 6 inches
finished length 14 inches
I started with the top band so I could fit the fabric and elastic just right around each girl. I made a casing for the elastic (I used 1/2 inch) and used the elastic as a guide to make sure the casing was wide enough. Nothing is worse than trying to thread elastic through a casing that’s a bit too small!
I like to pin the end of the elastic so I won’t accidentally pull it all the way through.
After it’s all in and the opening has been closed, I spread the elastic out evenly and tacked it down in a couple of places to keep it from shifting or twisting.
With the second band, I basted across the top and gathered enough so it would fit the bottom of the first band. For the tulle layer, I wanted it a little bit longer than the actual fabric of that band so that strip was cut an inch wider.
To attach your tulle, sew the ends together to make a loop, just like with each fabric layer (I read a tip that you can put a layer of tissue paper under the tulle to give it more stability while you’re sewing–then you just pull it off later, but I didn’t do that and it sewed just fine) Baste stitch across the top and gather, just like I did for the regular fabric. Pin the right sides of top band and middle band together with the tulle sandwiched between–this makes sure the tulle is on the outside of the skirt!
Baste, gather and attach your third band to the bottom of the second. I had to keep checking that the tulle was pulled out of the way so it wouldn’t get caught in the stitches.
I hemmed last so I could check the length on each girl while they had it on. I ended up just doing about 1/4 inch folded twice to do the hem.
I also did a zigzag stitch on all the raw edges inside the skirt.
And here’s the result.
You’ll have to wait for another post to see the whole outfit together, but I’m super proud of how these turned out. Thanks for looking!
