Sew What?!

Her is one of the adorable skirts she made!  She went on to say, in her own words, that the skirts are “actually very easy!’ 

I have a 2 year old little girl, well, actually she will be 2 tomorrow, and she made these little skirts for her 2 year old, so the project just called to me.  My little girl’s 0-6 month tights, that for some reason I keep around,were begging to be transformed into an adorable little skirt, and since the skirts were “very easy” I figured I had nothing to lose. 

I guess this would be a good time for my giant disclaimer:

DISCLAIMER:  I am not a seamstress!  I own a sewing machine which resides in my basement 364 days a year.  I have attempted to make 3 things with my sewing machine in it’s  long life including a set of Christmas Stockings which brought my own mother to tears with laughter!

I took myself on over to walmart to pick up some fabric.  I decided on some silky looking pink stuff.  It was $1.50 a yard.  I used less than half of it so the whole project cost me less than $0.75 because the tights had been purchased 2 years ago (so they don’t count).

(Take note of my professional supplies!)

Then my project began.  I followed Disney’s instructions step-by-step.  Here is a word to the wise, if  you have to google “gathering stitch,” you just might not be ready to do one!  I worked on that darn gathering stitch for at least an hour!  After tugging and tugging with no gathering what-so-ever, I realized that I wasn’t supposed to pull the top and bottom strings at the same time.  Then, once I figured out which string to pull, I would get halfway through the gathering process and the thread would snap.  Bringing me to my next word to the wise, when attempting any project that requires a gathering stitch, don’t use discount thread that has been sitting in your basement for 10 years.  I ended up with this: 

Notice my lovely straight lines which echos my sewing precision!  I don’t know why I didn’t take a picture of it, but I ended up with two more lines of stitches.  I know, bless my heart!

Once I finally got the gathering thing down, I continued on to the next steps, sewing the tops together and repeating with the bottom.  However, when I finished with the bottom, I ended up with this:

It was sewn completely inside out without any vision of the pretty side of the fabric.  At that point, I called my mom in defeat.  She suggested that I simply unpick a small section of the bottom and turn the skirt right side out.  I was thrilled that I didn’t have to unpick the entire thing. Once I had followed through with her suggestion, I ended up with this:

A beautiful fabric donut resembling nothing skirt-like.  At that point I nearly quit, but I hate to cower in defeat, so I pressed on.  I did unpick the entire bottom of the skirt and tried again, and I got this:

No!  Not the belly button. . . the asymmetrical looking skirt!

I then decided to take it a step further and make some little lovelies to try to cover up some of my mistakes, and finally, the end result. . . . . .

So in the end, was it worth it?  For $0.75 I say, Heck Yeah!  And yes mother, I did iron the fabric before sewing it, the poor thing went through a lot to get where it is!

For a full (and professional) tutorial for this project, click here!