Ruffly Skirt

Lately, I've been trying to use up some of my craft stash because it seems to have thrown up all over my craft room. I have a large box of t-shirts that I kept instead of sending to the thrift store with the idea that I could use them to make comfy clothes for the girls. Well, I finally pulled a few out to sew an adorable ruffly skirt for Sharon. I couldn't really find a tutorial for what I wanted to do, so I sort of made it up as I went along. Unfortunately, I didn't take pictures, but I'll try to explain what I did.

I measured Sharon's waist, which was about 19.5 inches, and measured how long I wanted the skirt to be. For the base skirt, I cut a 23x11 inch rectangle of fabric t-shirt fabric, using the bottom, hemmed edge for the bottom of the skirt. I just added a few inches to the waist measurement & about an inch and a half to the length that I wanted.

Sew a casing at the top for the elastic. I didn't double fold the casing because the t-shirt material doesn't fray, so it's not necessary.

Ruffle your strips of fabric (which I cut in 2 1/2 inch widths & as long as the t-shirts were wide). If you have a ruffle foot for your sewing machine, you're lucky & I might have to swipe it from you. Otherwise, I just set my stitch length to as long as possible, and set the thread tension to as tight as possible, which makes the fabric ruffle as you sew it. So, ruffle each strip, overlapping the ends so that you just have one long strip of ruffled fabrics.

Sew the ruffled fabrics to the skirt base, starting with the bottom ruffle, and then the one above it, making sure that they overlap so you don't see the base skirt. There is no need to hem the top edges of the ruffles because jersey won't fray. Continue to add ruffles until you reach about an inch below the top casing seam. Sew the base skirt together along the sides to make the back seam, & you're done.

If this was too confusing, please just find a ruffle skirt tutorial that has pictures & you should be able to figure it out. I loved using the t-shirts because it cut out so much extra time & work that I would have had to spend hemming all the edges.

Sharon loves this skirt & I love it because it didn't cost me anything & it's so cute! Since the shirts were bound for the thrift store, I don't really mind if she plays outside in it & it's super comfy! I did make it just a little bit big so that she can wear it longer.