Simple, No-pattern, Two-tiered Girls Skirt
This is the skirt I made to go with my daughter’s fairy Halloween costume.
I started out with a vintage sheet I found at a thrift store. (I actually found several of them, one of which I’m going to use to make a fabulous fifties style dress for myself) Cut strips of fabric from the edges that had a border and hemmed the bottom edge (for a slightly cleaner finish you can wait to hem the strips until you’ve sewn the side seams). I actually just cut them longer than I would need, with the intent of testing the width on my daughter later.
Cut an extra strip of fabric to make the bottom tier of the skirt long enough. Sew it to the bottom tier, turn and topstitch. [For a variation you can gather the bottom tier and sew it to the flat extra strip to give the skirt a little extra poof] At this point I measured on my daughter and estimated how wide would create a cute gathered skirt. Cut both strips to length and sew the side seams.
Put the bottom tier inside the top tier with the right side of the top facing the wrong side of the bottom tier, like so and stitch…
Pull the bottom tier through and press (iron). [Sorry I changed the angle of the skirt in the photos]
Flip the top tier over and press again.
Stitch a seam about 1/8” wider than your elastic away from the top edge of the skirt, but leave a gap so you can insert the elastic.
My highly technical, complicated and difficult (note: sarcasm) way of inserting elastic…
Insert the safety-pin into the gap, push it through the channel, bunching up the fabric. Hold the safety-pin and smooth the fabric out over the elastic. Repeat until near the end of the elastic.
When you get close to the end, pin the elastic to the fabric so you don’t end up pulling it into the channel and have to pull it all the way through just to start over again!
Continue to push the safety-pin through the channel until it comes out the other end. Pull it through enough to keep the fabric out of the way while you sew the elastic together. Make sure the elastic is not twisted, lay one side flat on top of the other side and stitch.
Pull the elastic so it completely goes inside the channel, even out the fullness and stitch the channel closed.
Voila, skirt complete! (I cut off a bit of the bottom level because it was too long.)
