Twirly Skirts Pattern

Several people have asked me about my pattern for the twirly skirts. I usually direct them to Ruth's Blog @ http://sewchic.blogspot.com/ to take a look at her pattern but my pattern is for smaller girls in the 5-8 size range so it might be helpful to see this pattern, too.

This is a picture of the pattern. I placed it on my 1" gridded cutting board so you could get an idea of the measurements. You might be able to see where I shortened it by about 1" at the top. It seemed to be a little too long above the flare. The smaller one is for my 5 yo DGD and the larger one is for my 7 yo DGD. It's an evolving pattern! I serged the elastic on for the waistband then turned it over and top stitched it.

Oh and I cut the pattern out of the soil separator from Lowes/Home Depot.

DGD Made a Twirly Skirt

Last week 7 yo DGD came to sew. I had the fabric for her to make a twirly skirt. She is making herself a twirly skirt here. There are 8 gores/panels in the skirt and she did a great job stitching them together. I helped her finish it by serging on the elastic and using the hem foot to put a tiny shirt tail hem in it. She hasn't tried the serger yet but she can control the sewing machine quite well. She actually made two of these that day. She wore one of them home.

Blindstitch hemmer

My 110 volt foot control for my blind stitch machine finally came on Thursday. I tried it immediately just to see if it would run and it did. Today I tried it out for a hem. After two broken needles and a little of this #$%^ to try to get a new one in and get it threaded I achieved success!! Here is a close up of the hem. Not bad, huh?

I made DGD a dress from a cut out panel that a friend had given me and hemmed it with the new hemmer. It worked well. I did have to adjust the "bite" and the tension some. The thread kept breaking and the needled broke twice. It really is a bear to get rethreaded. The holes in those needles are very small and the angle at which you come at it is not direct. I makes for some tedious threading.

Also the dress was too short as printed on the panel so I separated the yellow from the checked and inserted the blue piece for more length. The one I made earlier for the younger DGD was long enough. It is pictured in an earlier post. This is the completed sundress.