Tag: circle skirt

Pieced Rainbow Circle Skirt

I am finally making the pieced circle skirt my mom had found a few years ago. I’d worked out the proper dimensions and created a pattern to make an Anya-sized circle: t uses fifteen different cotton solid fat quarters. I purchased the fabric in half-yard cut, then cut each piece into a fat quarter so mom and I can make skirts for both Aisha and Anya.

I was hesitant to make the skirt until I was more adept with my serger. After making a Peppermint Swirl Dress, I felt a lot more confident serging these curved pieces.

The pattern pieces did not include a seam allowance; the allowance was added on the fabric. I also traced the pattern piece itself, then serged the pieces together with the needle farthest from the blade along the pattern piece’s line.

I assembled the circles instead of making wedges.

The concentric rings matched up well (Whew! That was a big relief … I was worried that I’d end up with a wonky misaligned mess).

I cut strips of each colour for the waistband and attached them individually to the color-matching circle to ensure the corners lined up. Once each piece was in place, I connected the different colors together. The bottom hem needs to be turned up and stitched, but I’ve got a gradient rainbow circle skirt!

 

Overlaying Fabrics

I played around with overlaying fabrics – I used an organza with a silver snowflake design over a deep blue satin. The resulting color is a much lighter icy blue (pretty much what I was going for).

I had a lot of trouble handling the fabric – I cut the circles and basted the two pieces together at the waist and hem. I then used the lower baste-line to fold and hem the skirt. That worked well. For some reason, though, I could NOT get the waistband to attach. I ended up catching the skirt in the serger and slicing the fabric. There’s a fairly large (3/4″ wide by 3″ long) gash that I had to patch up right along the band. Not something you notice when Anya is wearing it, I didn’t have enough fabric to cut new circles, and it would look worse if I spliced in an entire wedge of the skirt.

The organza material is a little plastic-y, and difficult to work with. My original idea was to do a rolled hem on the bottom of both materials. Couldn’t get a nice rolled hem on a straight piece of sample fabric … so that was out. Once the organza was combined with the satin, it was pretty easy to work with. It doesn’t drape like cotton, though (hence my problem with the serger).

The end result, however, looks really awesome. And Anya loves having a glittery silver snowflake skirt.