Makin' it imMACKulate: Tutorial Tuesday

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Tutorial Tuesday

Leah's running a little short on summer clothes. So I had an idea for a cute summer outfit for her! A ruffle heart skirt with a matching shirt:

Here's how I made the skirt!

First, I cut out a simple skirt from some lightweight denim. Each piece was 15" across the top and flared out to 20" at the bottom. I didn't want a full skirt as it would hide the detail!

I sewed up the side seams and serged the top and bottom:

and then added a simple bias tape waistband because my sewing machine can get cranky with too many layers of denim. Then I hemmed the bottom:

Basic denim skirt done! Time to add some detail!

I cut out a heart and traced it onto the skirt:

and measured across the skirt:

It was about 17" so I needed my white pieces of fabric to each be about 68" long for the ruffles around the skirt. The top half of the heart was about 9" so I needed 20" of red for the top. The bottom was only 5" so I needed about 11" for the bottom. Next, I cut these pieces out, 4 -34" white pieces and 1- 20" red plaid piece and 1- 11" red plaid piece:

I cut my pieces 1 1/2" wide because I planned on doing a rolled hem on my serger, but would make them wider if doing a normal hem.

Then I sewed my pieces together with each red sandwiched between two whites and hemmed the long edges:

After that, I ran gathering stitches on each side of center down both pieces and pinned them onto my skirt, matching the red parts around the heart I had traced. One for the top and one for the bottom:

Finally, I sewed carefully down the middle of each ruffle piece all the way around skirt and heart and then removed the bird's nest of threads I had from the gathering stitches! :)

Ruffle heart skirt done!