Finally Made A Ruffle Skirt!

A ruffle skirt has been in my project queue for some time, and I found some great stretch knit at Hancocks on clearance, so I couldn't wait to begin! I got the fabric in grey and yellow, and plan to use both colors to make Lil Boo Blue's cascading ruffle skirt. Today I'll just show how I made the yellow tiered ruffle skirt...

I made this over several short sessions and didn't get many great photos so I hope it all make sense. It's pretty simple -- big picture: you just gather long strips of fabric, then sew them onto a long rectangle, fold and sew the back seam and attach waistband.

Mine fits a girls size 8 -- my daughter's waist is 26" and hip/booty is 28", and just-above-kneelength is 13".

For the base of the skirt I repurposed a soft knit shirt. Cut it off at the underarm and cut down the back to get a rectangle about 17" x 60". (17" = 13" length + 4" waistband).  The shirt hem acts as your skirt hem - yay!

Cut 7 strips that are 3" x 60". Then gather/ruffle however you like.  I set the tension to 9 and baste 3/8-1/2" from edge without back stitching, and leave extra thread at the beginning and end. The fabric will gather itself.

Lay the ruffle along the bottom edge of the skirt (that used to be the shirt hem) and loosen the ruffles so the strip is as wide as the rectangle. Pin 1" from the edge and sew the ruffle to the skirt using a zig zag or elastic stitch along the basted stitching. (These stitches will stretch with the knit fabric).

Start sewing ruffles to the skirt base from the bottom and work your way up.

I left the top raw edge exposed because the ruffle above it will overlap and and hide it. Alternatively, you could pin the ruffle right sides together and upside down so that the ruffle falls over the stitching hiding the raw edge... This would increase the fluff factor, which would be good for a little girl or shorter skirt.

Pin your 2nd ruffle 1-1.5" above the first, sew, and so on. The fabric I used has a bit of glitter to it, so I turned a couple ruffles the wrong way so it didn't look too dressup-y. You should have about 4" left at the top for the waistband.

Now you can sew up the back seam!  Fold so the shorter sides meet, right sides together, and sew making sure you catch all the edges of the ruffles.

See what happens if one of the ruffles doesn't get stitched with the back seam?

Pinning the ruffles at the edges will help.

Sorry I didn't get pictures of constructing the waistband :(

Since I was using a t-shirt for the skirt base, my ruffles don't match the waistband. So I took a 4" x 60"  piece of the yellow fabric and placed it inside the waistband (got that?  skirt right side out, yellow waistband inside, wrong sides of the waistbands together), line up and sew along the top of the first ruffle. Fold both layers of the waistband down, to the outside, so that you have a folded 2" waistband. -- now the waistband matches the ruffles and the t-shirt is on the inside of the elastic casing we are about to make!

Turn the raw edges under and pin, leaving a 2" opening for the elastic. Topstitch to secure the raw edge, making sure to cover all the raw edges from the top ruffle. Feed elastic (I used 26" of 1.25" wide non-roll elastic) and topstitch the opening closed.

Tadaaaaa !

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