Lovey-Dove Skirt

In honor of Valentine's Day coming up next month (and that today is my sweet husband's birthday), I present the Lovey-Dove Skirt. It made its debut here in a smart grey with a fabric rosette, but for this tutorial I omitted the rosette and used a Valentine-y fabric!

You need the following to make this skirt (size 3T-4T):

Main fabric

-two pieces 14"x9"

-two pieces 22"x10"

Lining fabric

-2 pieces 22"x9"

Tulle netting piece

-2 pieces 44"x6"

I use a 5/8" seam allowance unless otherwise specified.

1. Take your 14"x9" pieces and sew the short ends right sides together. (I finished all my edges with my serger)

2. Iron in half wrong sides together.

3. On ONE SIDE, on the folded edge and BETWEEN SEAMS, make a casing for the elastic. My elastic I had on hand was 1/2" wide. Remember, the casing is only BETWEEN SEAMS. This way the front panel of the skirt is nice and flat, and the back scrunches to fit.

4. Cut your elastic to be the size of your girl's back from hip to hip, MINUS an inch. (I ended up cutting off more when I tried it on the daughter for a size test. Trust me this time!) Open the skirt and insert your elastic. Kinda tricky because it is on the inside, but not really. :)

It should look like THIS:

5. Make sure your elastic ends reach beyond the seam. Carefully take out your safety pins, making sure the elastic doesn't slip inside the casing!

6. On the outside, with the skirt wrong sides together, sew right over the seam to catch the elastic. Do this on both sides. And now you have your top tier that has self-lining.

It will look like this on the back:

and this on the front:

7. Sew the 22"x10" main fabric pieces short ends and right sides together.

8. No picture for this step because I'm a numbskull. Either do a rolled hem (on serger) or a narrow hem (iron at 1/2", then turn raw edge to iron line and roll it over and stitch down) on the pieces you just seamed together.

9. Gather this piece on the side you made the hem about 3/4" from the hem. I cheat by setting my tension really high

and my stitch length really long.

10. Adjust your gathers to fit the bottom of your top tier. Pin the gathered skirt to the top tier about 1/2" from the edge of the top tier, pinning only on the outside layer. Sew over the gathering stitches keeping the lining free. The lining will not be attached to this gathered skirt! Here's a picture for help:

11. Attach your netting pieces together, short sides together, and gather the raw edge.

12. Sew your lining pieces short sides and right sides together. Iron a 3/4" hem.

13. Adjust your netting gathers to fit the lining piece. Sew the netting to the inside of the lining with a 1/4" seam allowance. You are sewing the hem at the same time! Talk about multi-tasking. ;)

14. Gather the top of the lining and adjust it to fit the lining of your top tier. With right sides together, sew your gathered skirt to the edge of your top tier lining. In this pic you can see how I've turned everything all inside-out and put the gathered skirt inside to sew it.

15. Turn everything right-side out,

Put it on a wiggly child,

And love how it looks. And feels- all the seams and edges are on the inside, so nothing itches or bugs. Awesome.

This took me 3 hours, start to finish, and that was figuring things out along the way! I hope you make one! I think I'll make one in my size next. :)

Sizing tips:

To make this skirt, I loosely measured the widest point around my daughter's hips. I added 1 1/2" to this for seam allowances and used this measurement as the width of the top tier. I decided on a 4" tall top portion, so I multiplied that by 2 and added an inch for seam allowances.

The gathered skirt was roughly twice the length as the top tier (for fullness), and long enough to reach past her knees when attached to the top tier. I just measured from her waist to the finished length and then subtracted the 4" that makes up the top tier.

The netting was the width of the netting, twice, which equalled roughly twice the width of the gathered skirt. Fullness, again! I wanted to have it stick out from under the main skirt a good 2 inches or so, so I cut it at 6" in order to have 2 inches after folding it in half and sewing it to the lining.

You can use these guidelines to figure out a size for yourself or your kiddo. I'm no mathematician, so sorry if all this explaining made your brain hurt :)