Patternless skirt

Hello you!

Recently I have seen all sorts of adorable bubble and puffa skirts and thought they would be perfect for our little skirt loving monsta'.

I fell in love with this sweet teal ruffle cardigan; perfect for coming autumn. And I had this Liberty-esque-fabric that I bought many years ago. These two things combined became our first autumn 2012 bubble-skirt-and-versatile-matching-cardigan-set!

Strange fact is that the colours are - again - blues and greens, and subdued colours at that. Sooo very unlike me. But anyway, ...

I'll explain how the skirt is made, super easy!

You measure up the waistline of your model and double the width, plus an inch or so, for side seams. You decide on the desired length of the skirt and add 10 cm or about 3 inches.

If you have lining fabric you want to use, cut one piece of lining fabric and one piece of outer fabric. If you have a different lining fabric than your outer fabric, skip the next steps and simply attach a waistband in the same fabric as your outer one.

Make a side seam to form a tube in both pieces of fabric.

Now put the lining into the outer fabric (wrong sides together) and make the lining stick out 3 inches or 9 cm at the top. Check you are even everywhere and tack together.

Fold over the inside fabric to form a waistband. It can be as wide as you like it; mine was 4 centimetres. Tack and stitch. Leave open 2 inches for the elastic. Stitch all the way around the top at 3 mm from the side. This ruffles slightly and gives a nicer waistband, at least, I think so.

Fold in the outer fabric and make another tunnel. Check you are even everywhere and tack together before stitching. Leave open 2 inches for the elastic.

For the waistline I used quite stiff elastic. For the bottom seam I used this very loose webbing elastic, nice and comfortable. It ensures your child can actually move whilst wearing your creation!


To customise the cardigan, I made a little yo-yo and added half a snap on the inside. This way I can take the yo yo off before washing and make different ones to go with different outfits. (yes, there is another skirt coming up!) The other half of the snap is on the cardigan, backed by a little circle of  felt in the same colour as the cardigan.

To be fair, this skirt has pockets, so is slightly more complicated, if such a term can even be used when making a simple skirt like this. Just cut the outer fabric in two and one of those pieces in two again (you will need a slightly wider bit of fabric to do this of course. I'd say 2 or 3 inches or 6 to 8 cm extra). Make a faux fly and nice deep pockets for all those special pebbles, sea shells and other treasures.

Please let me know how you are getting on, or better still, share your results!

Oh, and before I go, do you know this song? Good for days like today!

Talk to you soon,
love,