circle skirt

DIY Skirt Making 101 Series: Fabric Selection (Video)

“Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty [emancipation from bondage, true freedom].” 2 Corinthians 3:17

Hello Everyone!

I hope your week is off to an amazing start! I am so excited as I have been working hard sewing skirts while trying to figure out the world of video tutorials. I’m not 100% there yet but my daughter and I have been trying to figure out how to edit in imovie and i’m still trying to figure out the overhead tripod situation. In the meantime I was able to video record this short tutorial about selecting fabric with my iphone tripod.

This week I decided to spend a little time discussing proper fabric selection. One of the biggest mistakes that many new sewers make is choosing the wrong fabric for their projects. Skirts are a great beginner sewing project and choosing the right fabric only adds to the success of your finished masterpiece. In this short tutorial i’ll show a very easy and straight forward way to guide the fabric selection process.

Just click below! and i’ll see you later this week with my latest make. Its pure cuteness! and I can’t wait to share it with you all!

♥ xoxo!

Iris

DIY half circle skirt tutorial

Hello Everyone!

I hope your week has been going super! Thanks so much to everyone who liked and commented on Monday’s skirt post. If you missed it you can click here and read all about it. I really do love the skirt. So much so that I wanted to put together a quick tutorial on how I made it.

If you are new to circle skirts. They over all are a quick make and really don’t require a pattern. You can fold your fabric and draw it on with a tailors chalk or wash away pen, cut and sew. The biggest thing is finding the radius of your waist measurement. There is an actual formula that requires simple high school math.

You do this by dividing your waist measurement by pi (or 3.14) and round off your answer to the nearest quarter of an inch.

my waist is 35″ + 1″ for fitting ease= 36″ divided by pi (3.14) = 11.46. So the radius of my waist measurement is 11.50″

If you opt to use this method. You can add your seam allowance after you draw out your skirt as I illustrate in the tutorial. Or you can simply add your seam allowance to your waist measurment. i.e. waist =35+ 1″ fitting ease+ 1/2″ seam allowance per seam (4 seams) = 38″.

The other and easy way to find your waist radius is to use a circle skirt calculator. My favorite one is from By Hand London.com I love it because it includes your seam allowance for you (if your making a 2 seam skirt. If you want to add a back seam you have to make sure to increase your waist measurement by your desired seam allowance) as well as gives your length measurement for a mini, midi, or maxi length. Here’s the link to the app. Its a handy little tool that I use alot.

Once you’ve figured out your radius and desired length you can follow along with the tutorial that I created in Adobe llustrator below.

Supplies:

Fabric of choice
Pattern/butcher paper
Measuring tape
push pin or thumb tack
pencil
scissors

I forgot to note that the 90 degree angle should be longer than your desired skirt length.

Voila! that’s it. Once this is complete draft a waistband using your waist measurement and desired width and add seam allowance. Cut and sew.

I hope your inspired to go out and make your own half circle skirt!

Until next time!

xoxo

♥Iris

DIY Ankara Print Circle Skirt

“They who sow in tears shall reap with joyful singing.” Psalm 126:5 (amplified)

“They who sow in tears shall reap with joyful singing.” Psalm 126:5 (amplified)

Hello Everyone!

I pray your week is off to a great start! I wanted to start this week’s post off with a short testimony about the photoshoot for this weeks make. These pictures caused me to reflect quite a bit. It started with a conversation that I was having with my daughter after she took my shots. As I was looking at them I had mentioned that they were some great action shots and that my smile looked nice. She said: “yeah mom! Because that’s your actual smile!” Her words blessed my heart and caused me to look more closely at the photos. She was right. I was genuinely smiling and laughing.

My divorce brought a series of major life changes along with a series of trials that really shook me. I cried out to God so many nights worrying about my and my children’s future. but I stayed steadfast in God and He used all of it not only to make me stronger; but to give me a testimony about the restorative power of a life in Jesus Christ. His love has been restoring me from the brokeness and pain of my past. One of my prayers for 2018 has been for God to restore my joy. When I saw these pictures it became evident that God was answering me. It really blessed me. I wasn’t just posing, but for the first time in a long while, my soul feels light and my smile is reflecting it. To God be the glory!

As for this weeks DIY post! This skirt is already a favorite of mine. It’s a self drafted half circle skirt and let me first tell you that I messed up my measurements when I cut the fabric lol!. I forgot to add the seam allowance for the back seam. So it was a tight squeeze at the waist lol! But I didn’t want to scrap it and I only needed like another inch. So came the genius idea to add an exposed elastic waistband at the back along with an exposed zipper which I’ve been wanting to play with for a while. I love it !!!! It came out sooo cute and gave the skirt a ready to wear aesthetic that I like. Not to mention that it gave me the waist room I needed. It’s still a bit snug but I’m not struggling to breathe in it lol! I’m calling it my happy accident skirt!

I plan on intentionally remaking this skirt with the right waist ease and a thicker waistband.

Fabric

The fabric is an Ankara print that I bought I believe from House of Mami Wata. I love the print but the print quality and weight of the fabric I was not impressed with. It’s more of a quilters weight cotton and I considered lining it to give it more body but opted to leave it unlined so I could wear it in summer. I chose this print for the skirt because I felt like the colors were a great transitional fall look.

Style it

It took me a little bit to figure out the styling for this because I wanted to do something out of the box but remain true to my style. The top is actually a men’s shirt I bought to use as an up cycling project but liked the idea of print matching with stripes. So I just tucked it in and rolled up the sleeves and voila! The yellow necklace is from Ashley Stewart clearance and the shoes are Forever 21. I think this a great and vibrant transitional season look.