Saturday, September 19, 2009

Skirt Makeover



A couple of years ago, Anna published a tutorial on how to make a simple girly skirt. My daughter, Merissa, made my younger daughter, Olivia, three new skirts from this pattern. We altered the pattern by making it an elastic waist skirt, rather than a drawstring type closure. It's a simple circle skirt design, which worked wonderfully.



Olivia keeps getting taller and taller, and only slighter wider, which allows her to wear her clothes for a long time. Merissa gave a good length to the skirt, which has allowed Olivia lots of time to wear these skirts. However, it is now time to fix the skirts to make them so they are not as snug. The length is still fine and she could get lots more use out of these skirts, so I decided to take the skirt apart and make news ones from them. First, I unpicked the seam, then I took out the elastic.



Next, I added some a decorative, cotton, embroidered tape, where the seam had been. I overlapped the edges to give a wrap appearance to the skirt. Once the tape was sewn on, I then sewed the skirt shut, from the bottom to about 3 inches below the waist, so that Olivia could get in and out of the skirt. The waistband is closed with a hook and eye.



A Faux wrap skirt. :)

6 comments:

jennstar said...

(This is actually a note from Clara to Olivia)
I like your skirt and the pattern of the fabric. I like the ribbon that goes down the side. I like pink.
Clara

Diane Shiffer said...

Carol... I love how you altered these skirts to be "wrap" skirts. They look lovely! FYI, I made a skirt from that same tutorial, only I made it as a full circle instead of half, and did it with an elastic waist and a flat front waistband. Here's the post I wrote about it:
http://tomatosoupcake.blogspot.com/2008/02/twirly-girly.html

If you're interested☺

Carol said...

Jenny, Olivia was very happy for the note, please say hi to Honey from Olivia. :)

Diane, Good to *see* you. :) I have to go have a look...headed over there right now.

Janel said...

I love them!

I ended up taking the bodices off several of Ariana's too small dresses, hemming the skirt waists and adding elastic. It's nice extra wear.

Mama Sewing said...

I just love the *faux* wrap look! I have the same issues with my little one, she grows taller but the width stays about the same!

Carol said...

Janel,

I use to do that with Merissa's dresses, too. If the dress had ties, I would take the ties off and use those as the waist band, then insert the elastic. :) With Olivia's Regency dresses, I haven't had the heart to do that. I have handed them down to another willing child, which has allowed me the opportunity to make more of those dresses, which I thoroughly enjoy!

Cheryl, perhaps we will have to go, together, on the next London trip? Then we can swap stories. :D