Sewing: Full Circle Skirt

I've always wanted a beautiful full circle skirt, but have never been able to find one in the shops that I just love. I've noticed that a lot of them are either elastic waist band, or attached to a top and made into a dress. So, I decided to try my hand at making my own.

For this project you'll need:

Fabric
Matching thread
Sewing Machine with needle
Measuring tape
Pen or pencil
Fabric scissors
Zipper
Sewing pins

Firstly, you'll need to know your measurements so you know how much fabric to buy. I actually did mine a little backwards, I bought my fabric cheap, then decided I wanted to make a skirt. Thankfully I had just enough!

Anyway, I used By Hand London's calculator to work out how much material I would need, how to cut it, and how big to make the waist etc. 

Using my waist measurement, 110cm, and asking for a midi length skirt, this is the maths I ended up with:

Now for me, because my radius doesn't fit onto standard material, I couldn't do one piece of material, I had to cut out 2 semi circles and stick them together. To make things easier, and to ensure I had even pieces once I cut them out, I folded my fabric in half, right sides together, and drew my quarter circle in the corner, like this;

Make sure you wash, dry and iron your fabric first! Doing this ensures it is preshrunk (saves finding this out after you've made the garment, and it not fitting), and ironing it makes sure that your fabric is nice and flat, reducing it being misshapen and ruining your garment. 
I didn't bother with making a pattern for this, I drew straight onto the fabric and worked it out as I went. I used a 1.5cm seam allowance for all of my edges. A flexible measuring tape worked well for me, but use what you have.



I then pinned my folded fabric together, so the two layers I was cutting stayed together, then cut out the quarter circle from each piece of material. This gave me two semi circles that I could sew together.



As I mentioned earlier, I don't generally like elastic waistbands for me, as I find they bunch up and hide the little bit of waist I have, so I prefer to have a fitted one. As my waist is 110cm, my strip of fabric would need to be that long, plus seam allowance (1.5cm either side, so 3cm total) and as wide as I wanted. I was a little limited in the width, because I had to use whatever fabric I had left. It ended up being about 6cm wide. 

Fold over your waistband (longways) right sides together and iron flat. Then pin everything in place and get ready to sew. 
Following the guide lines on your machine, sew all the way around like this, making sure to leave a gap so we can turn the waistband in the right way.

Once all sewn together, snip the corners off (as per the diagram below, I've marked it in red. Just make sure not to cut too close to your sewn line), and turn inside out. Use a pencil or chop stick or something similar to turn your corners out really well. Once all done, back to the ironing board! Iron that baby flat and beautiful. Where you haven't sewn (the gap where you turned it inside out),  make sure the raw (unfinished) edges are turned in, and iron flat. Ta Da! Waistband is done. Onto the skirt!

Firstly we need to sew our two semi circles together, to form our skirt. The easiest way to do this is to place the two pieces right sides together, pin the edges (where you're going to sew) together, and wiz it through the machine. Make sure you're securing the ends of the sewn lines by going back and forth over it (sew in a straight line forward, flick your reverse switch, sew a few stitches backwards, then forwards and continue on like normal). Onto the pleats!

Right, now this part will be hard to explain for me, because I made it up as I went! 
<-- Here is a quick explanation of the types of pleats, I used box pleats. 

My pleats were 10cm in width, so I marked out every 10cm around my waistband, and followed these instructions! 

If you're not interested in doing pleats and would rather have an elastic waistband, you can't! Mwhahahah, no but seriously, your waistband would be completely different. I'll make a note down the bottom for you though.

Now it took me a few goes to get my pleats right, so make sure you are moving your marks correctly, and pinning securely in place. 
There is nothing worse that sewing it together and realising something was off, then having to unpick everything. #sewingtruth



Here are my finished pleats, I've tacked them together using a simple straight stitch. As you can see, I have left a gap in between each pleat. This is because I made my pleats so wide. But you do whatever you like.


Now the not so fun part, ironing the pleats. This nearly killed me! It was so tedious and annoying, but well worth the effort. The final result was much better than I expected.



Onto adding the waistband! Pin one end of your waist band into place at the back seam, so the ends match up. Then pin the waistband in place all the way around your skirt. The waistband should end up being the same length as your skirt now, because of the pleating. Once it's all pinned, sew into place. 



Woo, waistband it done! Now for the zipper. Okay, so there are two main types of zip that we could use for this project: standard zip, or invisible zip. The standard zipper will be seen, as the teeth sit outside of the garment. The invisible zipper is sewn into the side seam, and so the seam closes over and the zip can't be seen! This is the one I did. Now I am sure I do zippers wrong, so instead of trying to teach you my way, here's a tutorial! (Ps, I love So Sew Easy!) Okay, all done? Let's move on...

All that is left to do is the hem! Fold over the bottom raw edge of the skirt (fold it in so wrong sides are touching), press with your iron and pin into place. If you like you can fold it over again so the raw edges are hidden. Once you have pressed and pinned the whole hem, sew a straight stitch and even distance from the edge to secure! I generally do my hems at 1.5cm in, but you do whatever you like the look of.

A final press and we're all good to go!

So, it fits me like a glove, has a wonderful twirl to it, and I pretty much just love it! I'll be making a structured tank top to go with it, in the same fabric.

Next up on the project list is a pencil skirt sloper and resulting skirt. Alex and I went to Spotlight and found some amazing fabric, cannot wait to show you what it looks like!

Much Love,

J xx

So You Sew...

Being a mum I've realised that my money needs to spread further than ever before. With bills, food, nappies and the like, clothes are not on the top of my agenda. Yes, I op shop shop when I can, but I can't always make it out of the house on time. Which lead me to my newest venture, learning to sew.

There are so many tutorials online for different sewing projects, from basic circle skirts, to more complex options such as jackets and cargo pants. I started with the easiest thing I could think of, leggings. On one of my op shopping adventures, I found some black and white knit material, and thought it would be perfect to practice with.

I set about looking online for a simple tutorial, then just followed the steps. Pretty simple really. I'm not the best at reading patterns, so I tend to make my own. If you already have a pattern for leggings, feel free to follow that instead.



1) Find a pair of leggings in the size you want to make. Mine are a 00, but tight fitting, if you want them to be looser around the leg, just add a bit of extra space in your pattern. Fold them in half. Trace around them on some paper. Add a 1.5cm edge - this will be for hemming and sewing the bits together. 


2) Pin your awesome new pattern to your material, then cut out. When pinning, try not to bunch the fabric, this can cause your pattern to be uneven. Because my material has horizontal stripes, I cut out one piece, matched the stripes, then cut out the other one. I wanted to make sure the stripes were all aligned.

3)Fold up the edges of the legs and press with an iron (heated according to fabric type). Sew up the bottom hems on both separate legs. Doing it now saves us having to do it later when everything is sewn together. When sewing with a machine, make sure you go back and forth a couple of times over the start and the end of the stitching. This means it will be less likely to undo.

4) Lay the pieces out flat, right sides together (patterned side for me). We're going to sew the front and back crotch pieces together. I forgot to take a photo, so here is my super crappy paint version. Sew all the way from the top to the bottom, remembering to sew 1.5cm in from the edge (this was our seam allowance in our pattern).

4) Now open the pieces out so the crotch seam is in the middle, like here <--We're now going to sew up from the bottom of one leg, up, then back down the other leg.

Once you reach the top of the crotch, where the pieces are already sewn together, stop. Make sure your needle is down (in the fabric), then turn the leggings, so you can sew down the other leg.

Try to keep your lines straight, as this will be the shape of the legs.

5) Time to create our waistband! If you have a baby to measure, then go ahead and measure their waist. Keep the elastic long for the moment, but mark on it where you need to sew it together.
6) Fold down the waistband, leaving enough room to thread the elastic through, and press. Now sew along the raw edge (make sure you are still leaving enough room to thread your elastic), but ensure to leave a gap so you can actually fit it through!

7) Grab your elastic and thread it through. It might help to attach a safety pin to the end to make it easier to grab. Just be careful not to stab yourself like I did!






8) Once your elastic is through, trim it to size and sew it together (at the spot you marked).
It's best to sew it like this:

9) Now you just need to sew the gap closed, making sure you don't sew over the elastic. All done!

These are so easy to make. Yes, baby leggings can be cheap to buy, but some times you just want something a little different. So why not have a go! Theo clearly enjoys his... 

  

Love, 

Mumma T xx