The Rainbow Patchwork Skirt!!! (Practically) finished!!!

Ok, I’m excited enough about this skirt that I’m showing it to you unironed, untrimmed, and photographed in crappy light (I might try and take better photos tomorrow to show it off a bit better – it’s really nice). When I got to the third tier on this, I suddenly began to think, this skirt is unwearable; there is no occasion, there is no social gathering, where this skirt will be appropriate on me, a cynical 35-year-old with angular features. And now I’ve finished it and tried it on properly, I can confirm that I was absolutely right. However, I love this skirt so much that I will wear it anyway: I may wear it to Tesco. I may wear it tomorrow to go and buy a barbecue from Homebase (it’s supposed to be nice weather next week.) This is how I made it, in case you want to make one too (you can adapt this easily to different sizes, although I think mine would fit most women (or adventurous men.)) It would also be lovely on a little girl.

Basically I made it from this post on Craftster, and this tutorial. (There is also this woman on Craftster who has made a long one – she deserves a medal. By the time you got to the bottom of that you would be sewing ruffles long enough to go round a house.) I used this order of colours: purple, light blue, green, yellow, pink – I’m not really that fond of yellow but I had to do it in that order because I’d got most fabrics in yellow and pink, for some reason. I used mostly quilting-weight cotton, and this thing can stand up on its own – don’t use anything heavier (lighter, like voile, would be fine.) I used a basic 5 inch square, and cut them all out with scissors – it would be better to do it with a rotary cutter probably but scissors are fine. I worked on a 1/4 inch seam all round but I think it ended up being bigger (it’s difficult to sew the ruffles on only 1/4 inch.) I used 12 purple squares, 18 blue, 27 green, 40 yellow, and 60 pink (increasing by x 1.5 each time). This makes it into a circle skirt – you could get away with a smaller ratio, but I think you’d lose some of the impact. I gathered the ruffles just by machining a long stitch all round and then gathering it by hand – it was quite laborious (although not undoable), so if you’ve got a ruffler foot on anything that would help. Also, I serged all the squares – I serged sides, sewed strips, then serged along each strip before ruffling and sewing to the strip above. I hemmed it by serging the edge of the pink strip and then turning a single hem and topstitching. I added a waistband after I’d sewn it all – it fastens with a drawstring (I don’t like the drawstring I used very much so I haven’t shown that. I might make a patchwork one and add beads, because with a skirt like this, in for a penny). The only thing I didn’t do was prewash all the fabrics, so this skirt might be a disaster waiting to happen. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

I’m normally good at styling clothes but the only things I can think to wear this with so far are: fitted white tshirt, white birkenstocks: fitted denim jacket, brown satin sleeveless tshirt, nude heels, lots of gold necklaces. If anyone has any better ideas, please let me know!