Because I love the lace so much, here are some detail shots:
I'm still not thrilled with my camera quality, but I found my old digital point-and-shoot, and I'll take that over a webcam any day.
I'd like to post a full tutorial for this skirt sometime, but that will have to wait until I make another one, since this was fully finished before I thought to take any pictures. Besides, the measurement and pattern-making part of the process was a little shaky. I'll work on that.
In the meantime, I'll show you something of the process for making a lacy, twirly circle skirt.
1. Measure your waist (or hips if that's where you like your skirts). Take a quarter of that measurement and draw a quarter of a circle around the corner at the edge of a piece of newspaper. Decide how long you want the skirt to be and mark that distance from one end of your line. Measure from the mark to the corner and, moving your ruler like a pendulum with one end fixed to the corner, mark the same measurement many times along the arc. Join your marks into a curved line that will be parallel to your waistline. Cut out the shape; this pattern piece will be a quarter of your skirt.
That's the step that really needs work. I'll make it clearer next time, I promise. For now, here's a picture of my finished pattern piece:
I was working with scraps from multiple shirts that I used in a T-shirt blanket for a friend, so I had to also have smaller pattern pieces. I traced my quarter-piece and cut the new one into smaller parts, reminding myself to add a seam allowance when I cut them.
2. Cut four of your quarter-circles from your fabric. If you're working with smaller pieces like me, cut enough to be the equivalent of four quarter-circles (or, since we're taught to reduce fractions, a whole circle). Don't forget to add seam allowances on either side of each piece, or you won't end up with a perfect circle. A quarter-inch is a common seam allowance.
3. Lay your pieces out in a circle and grab your stash of lace. Do we all have stashes of lace? I can't do without mine. Sometimes I arrange it prettily in mason jars. Sometimes I'm getting ready to move and it looks more like this:
3. Cut your lace into lengths that are just a bit longer than your skirt; since your skirt will stretch and your lace will not, it’s good to give yourself a little leeway. Arrange your lengths of lace radiating outward from the centre of the skirt in whatever way seems best to you. Pin them on. I don’t have a picture of this step, but I pinned a bit of lace to a scrap to show you. Let the lace hang off the end where you will finish when you are sewing it on.
4. Beginning at the end where the lace is flush with the skirt, sew the lace on with a straight stitch using your regular sewing machine. I used two rows of stitching, each as close as possible to one edge of the lace.
5. Sew your skirt pieces together. I used a serger; a zigzag stitch should also work.
6. Trim the bottom of your skirt and hem it. I just used a raw serged stitch.
7. Remember your waist measurement? Cut a narrow rectangle of that length, plus seam allowance. Before you cut it, check the grain of your fabric and make sure it will stretch sideways along your rectangle; this is going to be your waistband.
8. Sew the ends of your waistband together into a circle, double-checking that it will be the same size around as the top of your skirt.
9. With right sides together, pin and sew the waistband to the top of the skirt.
10. You could stop here. The loose waistband is very comfy. I wanted mine to look a little more polished, though, so I folded it over and hand-stitched it on the inside with a blind hem.
Ta-da!
11. Snip off any loose threads. Put on your skirt. Twirl!
This turned out to be more detailed than I intended. When will I learn? I'm always more detailed than I intend. Oh, well. When I have some more T-shirts that need cutting up, I'll make another skirt along the same lines and take pictures. Then we'll have a real tutorial and all the detail will make sense.
Happy twirling!
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