Ruffle Skirt

I decided to make our little one a cute skirt!  Possibly one to wear to Uncle Matt's wedding in May, she will be 1 mo old at the wedding and I want her to look cute but didn't really want to go buy a big fancy dress since Elijah grew way to fast to keep him in any clothes!!

So here is the pattern.  I kind of made it up as I went as I had an idea of what I wanted and then just ran with it.  Also note, this is my first attempt at an elastic waistband on anything so we will see how it goes!  I think I am going to take the blue material that is left, and make Elijah a matching tie or bow tie onesie so they match.  Then maybe a skirt for me.... Just thinking out loud sorry.  Ok, onto the pattern.

Fabric strips for ruffles: 2.5" wide, 27" long

Fabric for base of the skirt: 18" wide, 9"long
Elastic 1-4" less than waist of the skirt
Thread and Sewing Machine

First cut out the Fabric for the width of the skirt and length.  I do not have a baby to measure this on so I had to kind of guess.  I used a newborn pant waist and a 3 mo dress and put it somewhere in the middle(hopefully it will fit).  You can adjust the sizes of this to fit any little girl in your life.  Just measure their waist and add some space for seam allowance and go from there.  Now hem up what will be the bottom of this rectangle.  That way you have a nice smooth bottom edge of your fabric with no loose ends to worry about.

Last sew the two ends together so that you get a circle which will be the base for your skirt.  You will then pin everything onto this one piece.  So it should be 17.5" around and about 8.5" in length just so you have an idea.

For the ruffles you will need them to be 1.5x the width of the skirt so you have room to gather as needed.  Hem the bottom of the ruffle.  Then you are going to do a gather stitch for the ruffle.

To do this you are going to set your sewing maching to the greatest stitch length (mine is 4) on just a straight stitch, also make the tension less.  Sew in a straight line.  Pull on the bottom thread(bobbin one) so that the fabric will gather, don't pull too hard as you don't want to break the thread.   You will need to pull on some of the fabric as well to help it along, just remember nothing too hard.  I cheat with the gather stitch and I only do one instead of two-it is quicker that way!

Pin into place and sew onto the fabric, I like to start at the bottom so I can see where I need to go. Easier for my brain I guess.

Add the next ruffle 1.25 inches up from that one, continue for the next 3 ruffles.

We are going to use the rest for the waistband and hemming!-This gives us a lot of room but I wanted a lot in case I messed up so you could probably cut like 2 inches off the top if you wanted, especially if you have done elastic waistbands before!

Now it is time to tackle the waistband. I'm new at this so I hope I explain this well.

First I sewed the top 1/2" down so it looked hemmed, just to give it a clean look no matter what happened! That is the easy part.  Next, we are going to fold the fabric over top of the raw edges so that we hide it.  I did this in an accordian style.  So the right sides of the fabric were together, but it still came out with the right side up. (I hope that makes sense, there is a picture below)

Inside view!

Outside view!








Sew the edge by the ruffles to cover up the top of the gathering.

Once it is all sewn, you are now going to insert the elastic waistband. Make sure when you cut the elastic that it is 2" shorter than the fabric.  It will make it bunch up more.

 Make sure when you put the elastic in that you pull it really tight and sew it up close to the elastic so it stays stretched. I would pull it tight, pin it in place, sew up to the pin.  Pull it again and pin it.  I repeated this until the elastic was all sewn in.

Sew the top part down so that it is all clean.  I did a zig zag stitch on the top just for extra flair.  It looked really nice in the end. The inside should look like below. You are now done! Not too hard right??