My creative space...

 

I made a skirt today.  Came home after netball, realised my triathlon/bike riding obsessed niece is turning 12 next week and whipped this up.

 

I believe this is a Birch fabric, one of a bundle of lovely fabrics I grabbed at Gail B's this week.

 

I've followed the simple skirt pattern but made it nice and full by using two full widths of the fabric so that there are lots of pleats.  I also added some red ric rac to the bottom and one of Mollie Makes' 'handmade with love' labels that I got for free off the front of the magazine a month or so ago.

 

 

 

 

Hope she like's it!

 

There are more beautiful creative spaces over at Kidspot.

Change your mind reversible skirts!

I have new favourite birthday skirts!  They are still simple and have taken less than an hour each!  I totes love them!  The dollies!  The ric rac!  The reversibility (we all know little ladies like to change their minds)!

The pattern is from 1, 2, 3 Sew and the author has a lovely blog called The Long Thread which I totally think you should go and visit since she is ever so generous and shares lots of crafty links and tutes and whatnot!

You can see Ellen's change your mind skirt from the book right here.  She has used beautiful Liberty fabric which my budget can't quite reach yet.  The fabric below was purchased from Spotlight yesterday (except for the black babushka dollies which was gifted to me).  The red and blue is from their Lisette range and the vintage dressing up ladies was just a lucky find in their quilting cottons.  Cute yes?!

These two are heading to Hobart to my lovely neices who have birthdays days apart from each other.  I am going to team them with a couple of plain tops each from Target and maybe some nice tights - outfit complete!  Present complete!

Pretty Panel Skirt: A Tutorial

Remember when I guest posted over at Emma's simple handmade gifts for girls series?

I showed you how I made simple skirts for little girls.  I have made so many of them now, I can literally whip them up in half an hour or so.

Yesterday I decided to get a bit tricky and fancy this skirt up a bit more!  I am such a thrill seeker!  I am calling it

The Pretty Panel Skirt!

So, what I think you should do, is pop over to Emma's and read about making a simple skirt just so you have the basics down, then come on back here and I'll show you how I added the pretty panel in....

Righto,

Grab your materials.  Here I am using a spotty blue fabric as the main part of the skirt, some pretty floral as the panel and then just to be super fancy I am (of course!) adding a babushka dolly to the panel to pretty it up even more.

 Measurement wise, I made my panel the same length as the skirt and about 7 inches wide.  Really you can make it as wide as you like.  I made it wide enough to add the sweet dolly on.

Lay out your main fabric right side up and then line up the edge of your panel fabric right side down to one of the edges of your main fabric.  Sew down that edge.  In the picture below, I have sewn down the right hand side.

Turn this over now and line up the other edge of your pretty panel with the other edge of your main skirt fabric and sew down that line (again, in the image below this is down the righthand side.

Press your seams open so they are nice and flat and turn it out the right way and you should end up with this...

Now you can just go back to the simple skirt tutorial and create your hem as normal and maybe your waistband too.  If you would like to pretty your panel up even more as I have done with the dolly, leave your waistband for now.

To add my dolly I ironed her onto some visoflex (do I have that spelled right???) then cut around her gently and then ironed her onto the fabric panel.

To make her even more secure I then zigzagged around her edges.

Once you have done that you can go ahead and make your waistband following the same instructions you would use in the simple skirt tutorial.

All done?

Does yours look like this?

Pretty, yes?  And definately fancy!

I hope this all made sense.  Please feel free to ask questions (although I am not sure I will know the answers!)



Guest posting!

I'm so excited... I have a guest post up at the moment with Emma at Frog, Goose & Bear!

Go visit and I'll teach you how to make this outfit...