A Skirt for my Girl

One of my goals at the beginning of the year was to get over my fear of sewing clothes.  I don't know why but the thought of trying to sew clothes really freaks me out.  But there is sooo many really cute things out there that I'd love to make for my 2 cute girls or even for myself.  I have even bought a few patterns but while reading the directions I usually get lost and then just give up on it all together! 

Well this is the year that I get over it!! I have some cute fabric that I've been staring at for a while thinking it would make a cute dress or skirt for my girls.  Through the last few years I've seen many different patterns and I feel like I get the idea and figured instead of confusing myself with following patterns I just try and figure it out on my own.

So here is what I started with. 

And once again I started out thinking of making one thing and ended up with something slightly different. For my 7 year old I wanted to make a dress out of a white tee-shirt and then adding on this cute yellow and blue fabric.  Well by the end I decided I didn't like the shirt look and cut it off! So some these picture show the shirt attached.  Just ignore that please.  :)

I used a dress she has outgrown as a template.  I knew that I just needed to make it longer.

First I cut out two pieces at 12 inches in length and 23 inches in width.  This will be the main part of the skirt.  Since I don't have a serger I had to hem around all the raw edges.  This is the part I usually want to skip but I was determined to make a skirt that my daughter could wear for a long time with out it falling apart in the wash!

 

Next, Place the pieces face to face and sew together on the shorter sides.  Then, I sewed a loose stich all the way around the top making sure not to sew back and forth on the ends.  After that pull one of the threads and gather the fabric in the size of the waist. 

Next I cut a piece from the yellow fabric I needed it long enough to go all the way around the waist.  I also cut it about 4 or 5 inches wide then sewed it in half and turned inside out.  That way I could slip a elastic waistband through the center.

Once again ignore the T-shirt since I got rid of that part  but I wanted to show you how I also attached a flower on the waist band. I also sewed a button in the middle of the flower, to finish it off.

around the bottom of the skirt I sewed on a 5 in wide strip . Once again hemming all the raw edges and gathering the fabric in so that gave the skirt more character.

Pin then sew around bottom.  I also added a yellow strip of fabric to that I tried to gather the yellow part in a little more before sewing on.  That way it was more of a ruffle at the bottom. (sorry no pictures of that)

Here is the end results. 

I think it ended up being pretty cute and hopefully should last her through the summer!

I appoligize I thought I had taken more photos while I was making it but apparently I didn't.  So please don't hesitate to ask any questions!  THis is really a simple straight forward pattern.