KCW Day 5

I managed to sew on Day 4, but I was still feeling queasy at the sight of the fabric I had cut earlier (so weird!).  I decided to make circle skirts for the girls.  I have never been a huge fan of the circle skirt, honestly - it is not a look that is attractive on my shape, and I think a lot of times it looks silly on grown women.  But on girls it can be cute.  I decided on impulse to make the skirts while the girls were at preschool, so I just based the measurements off the corduroy tiered skirts I made them for Christmas.

I consulted a couple different tutorials online to get the basic method for making a circle skirt - it is very easy.  I didn't want to use wide elastic for the waistband because I thought that would irritate my older daughter's sensitive skin.  I didn't want to mess with a casing either, figuring it would be a pain to get the circular seam to lie nicely.  I had some foldover elastic in my stash that I had bought intending to make the baby some diaper covers.  I never made the covers, and now we use pocket diapers, which don't require covers.  So I had four yards of FOE in various colors.  

I folded the FOE over the raw edge of the skirt's waistband, sandwiching the fabric between two layers of elastic. I divided both skirt and FOE into quarters, pinning four times, and then stretched the FOE to fit, making sure to keep the skirt fabric inside the sandwich.  I used a three-step zigzag to attach it.    And it worked!  The FOE is very stretchy, so I actually needed to shorten the waist a bit beyond my usual elastic length after the girls tried the skirts on.

The pink fabric is some really lovely, high-thread-count stretch poplin that I got in the $2.97 section of G Street Fabrics awhile back.  I figured it would come handy sometime because, pink.  But it was TOO pink for most patterns with which I had tried to pair it.  I actually think it might be too pink for this skirt.  I couldn't get a single photo that didn't look like the skirt was glowing neon.  It's not really neon pink - it's just really really really pink.  Little Sister has requested that I put "something" on the skirt - we settled on "bubbles" - and the appliques might make it a little less pink.  Whenever I get to them, anyway.

The floral is a print I picked up from FabricMart.  I love the print and had actually bought enough in quantity for a shirtdress for myself.  When the fabric arrived, though, I was disappointed in how quilty it felt.  It is wide fabric - like 58", I think - so I figured it would be apparel fabric, but it feels more like quilting cotton.  In any case, it worked well for this skirt.

The skirts turned out way longer than I intended them to, mostly because the gils insist on pushing the waistbands down to their hips.  Between the length and the stretchiness of the FOE, these should last a LONG time!

Which is good, since the girls are really digging the twirly factor.  In fact, this morning Big Sister complained that the Ice Cream Dress I had laid out for her to wear church wasn't twirly enough!