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Friday, April 6, 2012

Fabulous Free Pattern Friday

This skirt was the very first post I did on sewing with rectangles. I began with a basic straight skirt pattern, cut a yoke from it and then used a tablecloth for the bottom portion of the skirt.

As you can see in this picture,I used the entire tablecloth. You can read that post here. When you read the post, take note of the little mistake I made.
Since this is buried as the old Rectangles, Squares and Circles series, I thought I would post it again today so that it is now part of the Fabulous Free Pattern Friday series. Today marks the 34th Fabulous Free Pattern Friday post. I can't believe it. We're fast approaching the my goal of 52 posts! Just 18 more to go. But I'm not getting out of a little work today. I've done another skirt, but this time even easier and it is out of knit.
You may remember this fabric from last week's Sleeves On Saturday post. Once I cut the top, I realized that I had just enough fabric left over to do this skirt.
Because this is a knit, it has a much softer drape than the cotton tablecloth did.
It's a little difficult to see, but there is a hip yoke and there is elastic at the waist.
 You can see in the picture that the two skirts are exactly the same when laid flat.
To make the yoke, measure your hips. Since this is knit, there is really no need for ease unless you will be more comfortable. The width is your hip measurement and the length is your desired length from your waist to your hip. 9" is a typical measurement from the waist to the desired length. I like to use an 1 1/2" wide elastic. You will need to add 1 1/2" to the length of your yoke for the elastic. You can refer back to last week's post for how I attach the elastic.
For the skirt portion, measure from the yoke to your desired length. This will be the length of your skirt piece. For the width, divide your hip measurement in half. If your hips measure 40" then half will be 20". Then determine how long you would like the side drape to be. The length of my skirt from the yoke is 17" which makes the skirt fall just at my knee. The side drape only measure 13". Yes it does come up the side of my leg a bit, but the drape is so full that you will not need to worry about this being too short and showing too much of your leg, but you can make this measurement longer if you would like. In my case, it was all the fabric that I had. So in the above picture the opening for the yoke is half your hip measurement and then on either side is the length you would like for the side of your skirt. In my example it would be 20" plus 13" on either side which equals 46". 
A picture of the entire outfit. I may look a bit like a wall of wallpaper, but I rather like the print.
I know that I usually say this, but this is so very simple to do. It took me just about an hour from start to finish to do this skirt.
Good luck if you decide to give it a try.
Happy Friday Everyone!

3 comments:

  1. What a gorgeous skirt! Now, that IS a tablecloth skirt. ;)

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  2. Love it...I made a dress from a tablecloth a few years ago my girlfriend gave me. However; I must try your version in the very near future :)

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  3. Rhonda...it's pretty and doesn't look like "a wall of wallpaper" at all.

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