Isabelle's Pansy Skirt

Here is the Pansy Fabric that was free that became a skirt, and this is the story how....


Isabelle kept bringing it to me, saying "Pwease make me a Pocahontas dress, Mom?"
To which I said,"Can we make a skirt? I think a Pocahontas dress would be brown."
To which she graciously replied, "Alwight."

So, get your sewing machine and scissors out, here goes...



This is the desired result for a sturdy 4 year-old size. I realize this might fit your 6 year-old, so adjust your measurements accordingly!

The skirt has a yoke, a large ruffle, and a small contrasting one.

The yoke was 7 1/8" wide by 38"

The large ruffle 11 1/4"wide by 75"

(That's 2 pieces, each 37" long)

and the ruffle was 7 1/2" wide by 112"

(That's 2 pieces the full 45" of the fabric and a third one that was 22")

Here they are with the side seams sewn together and the ruffle folded over lengthwise, gathered, and pinned in place. (If you don't know how to gather, skip down a little bit)

Be sure the sewing machine is on a basting stitch and baste the gathers down. (Some seamstresses stitch it in place at this point, but I get much neater gathers this way, and I never sew over pins, so this makes that easier. :) I'm weird that way.
This is my little sweetie on her basting stitch.( 2.2 is her regular stitch, by the way)

Here is the ruffle basted on at the lower edge of the basting stitches.

This is what it looked like in action-

Next I serged it. Zigzag here if you don't have one of these amazing, wonderful little honeys.

Topstitch. Please. It looks better.

See?!

Gather the top edge of your ruffle by sewing with a basting stitch at 5/8 "and 1/4" and separate the threads neatly like this.

Turn the yoke right side out and the ruffle wrong side out. Set the yoke inside the ruffle so that right sides are together. Are we clear?!!! I hope so...

Like this-
Match the side seams and pin them together

Find the centers and pin them together. I had pictures of all this but it was way too much!

Then grab the thread in your fingers like so, and the fabric in your other fingers, and slide it gently along. I have observed that thread breaking comes from jamming the thread along, rather than keeping it moving.

Pin it neatly down, baste it like we did the ruffle, serge or zigzag, and then...

Topstitch!

It should look something like this. Yes?

Fold or iron down a 1 1/4" casing at the top of the yoke(assuming you have 1" elastic)and stitch along the lower and upper edges like this-

Leaving an opening for the elastic

Stick a nice big safety pin through your non-roll elastic (the kind with vertical stitching in it)

Once it's threaded through, and you've tried it in for size, cut it off and pull the ends ou
Zigzag it together about 3 times for safekeeping

And sew the casing opening.... shut. Amen

And now you can see the finished product sideways, because Blogspot was having a bad hair day and wouldn't allow me to rotate this picture. Weirdsmobile.
Moving on.

Loveliness itself. A free skirt, about three hours, and 1 sweet girlie girl in a twirly, twirly skirt.

I Love happy endings!

Happy sewing!
Rachael