Friday, June 25, 2010

Ruffled Girls skirt!

Even though I don't wear many "frilly" things myself, I adore making them.  My neighbor's and friend's little girls' birthdays were a perfect excuse to make some adorable ruffle skirts from Snazziedrawer's "Ooh La La Ruffled Skirt Pattern."




Here are a few pictures of my process and one of the finished skirts.




I must say that Snazziedrawer's pattern is great for beginner and experienced sewers.  She gives enough information that a person can start sewing with this pattern.  Those who are more experienced can use her pattern and alter or skip some of her instructions, as necessary.  


For example, instead of making the requested 1/4" turned hem on the ruffles, I used my serger to make a narrow rolled hem on each side.  The results weren't quite as pretty, so I stitched grosgrain ribbon over the top hem of each ruffle.


Personally, I think the ribbon trim gives the design some kick:




What do you think?

Thursday, June 3, 2010

A Refashioned Skirt!

I'm finally getting around to posting about this skirt that I refashioned.  It used to be a nice navy skirt with a floral print.  It is very comfortable and it's just my size these days.  However, it was a bit too short to wear anywhere but around the house.


My solution: add some ruffles!  I had just purchased a few yards of light blue baby-whale corduroy from Joann's red tag wall.  I used about 1/4 yard of it to form the longer ruffle, and found some silk georgette that I had ordered months ago to add a bit of spice as the top ruffle.




This was my first experience with silk georgette, so I did some experimenting.  I recall reading somewhere that tissue paper was great to use as a tear-away stabilizer, so that's what I did.  It made sewing this stuff infinitely easier!



Because the georgette was so slippery, I decided to forego my handy-dandy ruffler foot, and I used the two-lines-of-basting technique to gather it.

Before gathering, however, I finished the edges on my serger with a narrow rolled hem.  After a bit of practice and adjustments to my machine (on scraps, of course), my rolled hems came out beautifully!  

Once I had gathered them to the correct lengths for the hem of my skirt, I overlocked the two ruffles together at the top.  This made it so much easier to attach them to the skirt, as the corduroy gave some body to the ruffles, and I didn't have to worry about the georgette slipping all over the place.



On my ruffles, I made sure to match up seams, so I could then match the ruffle seams to the side seams of the skirt.  I pinned, then stitched the ruffles on the underside of the existing skirt hem, using navy thread and a straight stitch. 

Voilà, a great new flirty skirt to wear anywhere!