Pretty Girls Skirt

Big E is going to a little girls birthday party tomorrow so it was a perfect excuse to visit Mary's Patch our local fabric/ quilting shop! The little girl who's party it is is a grown up five year old so we chose this some pretty blue fabric with multi coloured watercolour effect flowers on it.

I decided I wanted a really 'finished' looking skirt but had to stick with an elasticated waist since I am not sure what size of clothes the little girl takes.

I measured my Big E's waist and used that measurement for the elastic (22 inches) and doubled it for the width of the fabric so I got a fuller skirt. I wanted the skirt to be about 35cm when finished so cut the fabric 42cm long.I ended up with a rectangle 44 inches x 42cm  (sorry for the mix and match units, my physics lecturers at uni would have had serious words about that!!)

I love French seams, strange I know, but they look so nice so I wanted to use them on the skirt! If you have never done one before they are simple, if you have you can skip this part!

First fold the fabric in half to join the side seams. Fabric should be wrong sides together. Sew a 0.5cm. 

Press seam open

I then turned it inside out and sewed the seam again with a 1cm seam allowance then pressed.

You end up with a totally enclosed seam, so cool!

I then folded down 1 cm on the top and pressed. Then, folded 2.5cm, pressed, sewed all the way round really close to the top of the waistband.

then sewed round the bottom of the waistband leaving a 5cm gap at the side (beside the side seam) for the elastic to go in.

Once the elastic was in i jointed it using zig zag stitches then sewed up the gap .

I like to anchor the elastic in place to avoid twisting and also to let you adjust the elastic if necessary so I sewed the elastic in place at each side.

Since my seam was on the side I wanted a wee label to show where the back was. I used t-shirt transfer paper to transfer on to a piece of ribbon stuff (what is it called??!!) then sewed it on the back.

I finished the hem in a similar way to the waistband, folded 1cm then pressed, folded 1.5cm then pressed then sewed all the way round. I put another row of stitching about 0.5cm from the first just for decoration.

I then decided to make a fabric flower to put on a hair clip. I am not really very happy with it but don't have time to make another so it will have to do. I clipped it to the waist band for the photo but it actually looks really good there!

The inside is pretty too, no raw edges to be seen!!

Sorry for the poor photos, it is pouring (again) and the light is rubbish!