Eat. Craft. Sow: The 15 minute skirt

I love this way of making skirts. It’s so easy and great for beginners. There are a few of these tutorials floating around the blogosphere.

All you will need is a metre of some pretty fabric and elastic and your set and as my girls are petite I can get 2 skirts out of 1 metre. Oh and another great thing about the one I made is that it only cost me 50 cents. Yep that’s right 50 cents. I have mentioned this before but don’t ever leave a fabric store without checking out the remnants bins. You will be amazed at what you can find and it is always reduced.

This fabric is like a very light velvet with foiled stars all over it and perfect for Miss J everything has to be pink lol. And it doesn’t fray so I don’t have to worry about serging it.

So first of all you will need to determine how long you would like to make the skirt and add on extra for your hem and for the elastic to go through.

Miss J likes her skirts long so I made the length 16 inches, that includes an inch for the hem and the waist. When finished the skirt will be 15 inches in length.

For the width, measure the waist and then double. Miss J is 22 inches so I cut it at 42 inches.

The first thing to do is to sew the hem. Using my hemming gauge I fold the hem to measure half an inch, pin and sew.

Now to fold the right sides together and pin the sides. You can cut the fabric in half and then sew both sides so that you have a seam either side of the skirt but only having to sew one side is why this skirt is so quick to make.

Time for the top of the skirt. I fold this over and pin at half an inch as well as my elastic is only 4mm so depending on the width of your elastic you will need to fold the top over enough to sew and fit the fabric in.

Don’t forget to leave a gap to thread your elastic through. I like to leave to pins sticking out so that I remember not to sew all the way around.

All you need to do now is thread through the elastic and sew it together. The length of my elastic is 22 inches. To stop the elastic disappearing into the hole I like to anchor it to the material using a pin.

Now just to overlap the elastic I usually overlap about an inch and then zigzag it together to secure it. If you don’t have zigzag, no problem just sew back and forth a few times.