The other day I found a fabulous blog called Ruffles and Stuff. Disney, the author of the blog (I know, awesome name!) is such an inspirational woman! She can make almost anything out of almost nothing, and she makes it look so easy! I know that this entire blog is about becoming a more well rounded woman, and while I see so many things that are inspire me, there only a few things that make me want to get right to work recreating them. Her blog is one of those things. She has a great way of making things look so feminine and expensive with stuff she usually has lying around. It’s amazing! I am really excited because I have already contacted Disney and she has agreed to allow me to use her for an upcoming {Blog Feature}. But in the mean time, I just had to try one of her projects. One of her most recent ventures was converting her little girl’s tights into knee socks. Once she had done that, she had several leftover “tight tops” that she just had to do something with. So, being the brilliant mind that she is, she turned them into bubble skirts for her little girl. Can I just say AH-Some!
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!
Then, take a small and SHARP pair of scissors, and cut a straight slit where you’ve marked your button hole. No sewing is necessary for this step, but I did do a small stitch around the outside of my slit simply for looks.
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