Make a Circle Skirt // Cut Your Fabric and Sew Your Side Seams

Have you got your fabric? Good, It's time to make it into a skirt! So I hope you wrote down your waist radius from the Circle Skirt App and the length of your skirt? Well in case you didn't I have added the link again, it can be handy to have this open too while you cut so you can see what cutting layout they recommend. If you are making a half circle skirt or a quarter circle skirt you will only need to draw your circles once, but if you are making a full circle you will need to do it twice. Either way the idea is exactly the same.

So fold your fabric according to the apps instructions. To help you understand how to cut your fabric my waist radius is 12cm.

In the correct corner of your fabric (mine is folded at this corner but yours won't be if you're doing a quarter circle). Then take your tape measure and your dressmaking pen (or chalk if thats your thing) and measure your radius from the corner. You can see I have made a mark at the point that is 12cm away. I have then made other marks that also measure 12cm away in different directions. Do this to yours too.

When you have enough marks, join them up to make a curve:

Then repeat this step for the bottom of the skirt. This time the measurement will be your waist radius (i.e 12cm) PLUS the length you want your finished skirt to be (61cm) PLUS seam allowances (1.5cm) to give a total radius (64.5cm).

Use this measurement to draw the curve for the bottom of the skirt. Now cutting stretchy fabric is a little tricker than cutting wovens because it stretches as you cut. So if you have a rotary cutter then you can use that to avoid this problem. For those of you that don't have a rotary cutter (probably most of you) you can just use your normal dressmaking scissors. Since you have drawn the cut line on the fabric you don't need to worry too much about stretching it because you can just cut along the line. Just try to keep your scissors as close to the cutting surface as possible rather than lifting it up as your cut.

Now is a good time to remind yourself of what to do when sewing with stretchy fabrics.

If you're making a full circle skirt sew up one side seam, if you are making a quarter or half circle skirt you can skip this step because there is only one side seam. Once you only have one side seam left to sew, hold the skirt up around your waist. You'll find it stretches quite a bit and overlaps some. You will need to trim down one of the edges to allow for this overlap, other wise your skirt will fall down when you wear it! (Sadly photographing this step proved too tricky so I can't show you :( ) Make sure you account for your seam allowance to leave about 3cm of overlap.

Finally sew up the other side seam. And…. um….. wow! It's starting to look like an actual piece of clothing! I love that step, every clothing project has one, the moment that it changes from some random pieces of fabric to something that actually resembles an item you might wear.

All there is left to do is to sew a waistband and hem your skirt (come back next week for this). No need to finished your edges because they won't fray on stretchy fabrics! Winner. See you soon. Zoe xx

Sewing School // 3 Tips for Sewing with Stretch Fabric

If I am honest I avoided projects that require knit (or stretchy) fabric for quite a long time. I was nervous about it. I didn't want to add an extra complication into my projects. I was a pretty competent sewer before I braved them at all and then totally messed it up (I didn't then know the 3 things I am about to tell you). But recently I have made a few things from stretchy fabric and I have had much more success. I found them so easy I don't know what all the fuss was about before. In fact I now love these items most out of all the clothes I have made for myself so far. I want to share with you the few tips of sewing with stretch fabric, because really there is nothing to worry about.

Number 1 // Use A Ballpoint Needle
If you want to have any success sewing with some stretch fabric, you will need to invest in a ball point needle for your sewing machine. These inexpensive, less pointy needles are designed so that they will push through the spaces in the threads of your fabric rather than making a new hole, this prevents your fabric from having little holes all the way along the seams, something you definitely won't want.

Number 2 // Sew With a Zigzag Stitch
On a normal sewing machine, a straight line of stitching won't stretch. If you do this on a stretchy fabric then you are fighting a losing battle, the fabric will stretch but the seams won't. To overcome this you can simply sew with a Zigzag stitch instead. This way your seams have the same flexibility as your fabric. There are other stitches that work too but a Zigzag stitch is the simplest.

Number 3 // Don't Stretch the Fabric as you Sew
When you feed your fabric into a sewing machine, the fabric will be pulled through automatically. When you are sewing with stretchy fabric this can mean it stretches on its way in unintentionally. This results in a really uneven edge- bummer. To avoid this try and hold your fabric up level with the needle and feed it in with you hands. It is actually pretty easy to do this once you have had a little bit of practice, so just test it out on a sample bit first.

These three things are the only 'rules' for sewing with knits. But there is something else I would say if you are only just learning. Look out for something that is not too stretchy. This is kinda tricky if you are buying your fabric online. But next week when I start going through how to make a stretchy circle skirt I am going to talk about what kinds of fabric to look for for your first few stretchy sewing projects, why not have a go with me? Zoe x

A Simple Stripey Summer Dress (Just As Autumn is About to Arrive)

This past weekend we had a weekend camping near the beach, at the end of last week I was frantically sewing to try and finish off this summer dress. I've been planning on making one like it all year but only came across this single knit cotton a few weeks ago, just in time for Autumn of course. I think I need to learn a thing or two about sewing for the right season.

Anyway, I used the plantain tee pattern (it's free to download) and then adapted it to make myself a dress. I wanted the skirt to be circle skirt style but I didn't want to have to sew a waistband. So I just extended the top pattern down into a circle skirt dress:

I just did this free hand, I used the front piece as a template for the back skirt and then after sewing up the side seams, according to the pattern instructions, just trimmed it a little to make it hang straight all the way around.

It was my first attempt at sewing a stretch neck line too and I think I did pretty well:

It isn't quite even all the way around but it lies really flat. Plus you wouldn't have noticed that it wasn't even unless I had pointed it out to you right? Well I am going to keep telling myself that because I am actually really proud of the results. My only regret was not making it earlier in the summer to wear during the really hot weather.

Well at least I made it in time for camping and could wear it for one sunny day at the beach. I'll be sewing a lot more with stretchy fabric though from now on, its much easier than I first thought. More about sewing with stretchy fabric coming later this week. Zoe x