[Music] hi I'm Dana Welcome to Made Everyday Today we are going to make some circle skirts with an exposed elastic waistband These work for babies for girls You can make one for you They're great for any body size First I'll show you a single layer and then we'll make a really fun bouncy double layer So let's get [Music] started I like making circle skirts because once I've drawn my circle they're a pretty quick sew and they are super fun to wear They're twirly They're kind of bouncy And the reason they're called a circle skirt is because it's made from a circle My oldest daughter loves to wear these and so does my youngest daughter And when she was a baby I would make little tiny circle skirts put a onesie underneath and it was the cutest outfit for church I also like to make them for me And the really fun thing is that these elastics give it a great pop of color So here's what you need a yard or two of fabric and enough elastic to go around your waist The hardest part about the skirt is simply drawing the circle for the skirt but we'll walk through it step by step And if you're making this for a newborn baby I do have a free pattern on my website Go to made everyday.com click on baby circle skirt and you can download and print it right to your home computer This is what the pattern looks like that we're going to make This is for my daughter Lucy who's eight and it's a fourth of a circle Then we can fold our fabric in fours and cut it on the fold And when we're done we'll have a full complete circle of fabric And if you're making one for yourself it will look like an even larger quarter of a circle So let's make one that's going to be perfect for your child or for you Grab a few things to help you draw a circle I've got a few pieces of paper taped together here Got a pencil some rulers a calculator and something to keep some notes Now it's time to do a little math Don't worry we kept it really simple Think of your waist as a circle and we want to figure out the radius of that circle Now we can't very easily measure that but we can measure the circumference So here's a little equation for you Radius equals circumference or your waist divided by 2 pi Remember pi 3.14 approximately So measure your waist and decide where you want your skirt to hit Do you want it to actually be up at your true waist or do you want your skirt to hang down a little bit lower i've measured my daughter's waist and it's 22 in And write that down Waist 22 And then I like to add 2 in to that just to give you some wiggle room to get it up over your hips So plus 2 equals 24 Now let's do our little equation Radius equals 24 / 2i or 6.28 24 / 6.28 is 3.82 I'm going to round that to the nearest 1/4 in So 3 and 3/4 in Okay So the first circle I'm going to draw for my waist is going to have a radius of 3 and 3/4 Now let's figure out the length Now the length is even easier We can measure that Decide where you want your skirt to hang to Start at your waist Measure down to your knee Make it stop at your mid thigh For my daughter I want an extra 13 in for the length of her skirt Now what we're going to do to make it easier to draw is it's really just an extension of this previous radius that we already figured out So I'm going to add the radius plus my 13 that I want I get 16 and 3/4 in for my second circle that I'm going to draw So let's draw those Grab your ruler and pencil And if you're making this for an adult you might want to use a yard stick so that you can get the full length that you need Now we're going to start in the very corner of our paper This is the center of our circle And remember that we're only drawing a quarter of that circle So our radius was 3 and 3/4 in Place a little mark right there And then place another mark on the other side 3 and 3/4 And then what I'm going to do you can use a compass for this I just always have my ruler really handy So I'm going to do this keep my left hand holding onto the ruler and then just slightly move my ruler and continue making small marks that are 3 and 3/4 in from that center point And don't worry if this is not completely accurate You'll still get a really nice curve Keep going down There we go I have all my little dots Now just draw them together All right Pretty easy There is the circle for our waistband Now let's do the one for the length Start at that same center point Measure 16 and 3/4 for my daughter's size Now mark it at the other side 16 and 3/4 in Okay Wow that barely fits my paper Good thing I can always tape more if I need Okay keep measuring down 16 and 3/4 in See just when you thought you weren't going to need math from school anymore sewing actually involves a lot of math Okay Now let's draw those together All right Now the last thing I want to do is I want to mark on the side that it's going to be cut on the fold So I write fold right here And I'm going write fold on the other side Also both sides are cut on the fold And then I just like to keep notes I'm going to write down that this is for 8 years old Okay let's cut it out Okay I've cut out my pattern piece Now let's cut out our fabric I already have it folded in half just the way that it came on the bolt at the fabric store Now I want to fold the whole thing in half again because we're only cutting a fourth of a circle So I have a fold up here and I have a fold along here I want to place those two fold marks on my fold Now something you want to consider if you're making this for an adult is that you find fabric that's wide enough for the length of your skirt Most standard cotton is only 44 in wide which means you only have 22 in of length for your skirt And when I made one for myself I wanted 26 in But I found some really cool chamber fabric that came 60 in wide which gave me 30 in So I was good If you can't find what you need you can always cut two semicircles sew side seams and then you have a complete circle Okay let's cut I just like to keep my hand holding the pattern in place and cut right along that edge Or you could trace your circle first and then cut it out Do what works for you Now let's cut out the waistband Now let's see how accurate our circle making skills were Let's open up our little doughnut here And look at that Looks pretty good Now let's talk about our waistband What we're going to do is take some elastic and sew it right to this opening that we cut out And let me show you how it looks when you pick it up and pull the waistband straight Look how beautifully the fabric drapes It's kind of a little bouncy Now for your elastic you can find all sorts of fun colors in the store and online And depending on who you're making the skirt for depends on what width you want When I'm making these for babies I usually use 1 inch wide elastic For my 8-year-old daughter I like to use 2 in wide And for myself I go anywhere between 2 in and sometimes even 3 in The thing that's cool is that it ends up kind of looking like you're wearing a belt on your skirt You can even find metallic elastic which is what I used on the skirt that I made for myself And if you just can't find a color that you like you can even dye your own elastic And I have a detailed tutorial for this on my website made everyday.com Click on dyeing elastic Okay The amount that you want to cut is just your waist measurement You don't want it any larger than that cuz you want it to be snug around your waist So I've already pre-cut for my daughter 22 in Okay let's move on to the next step Now I've got my elastic here and what I want to do is to create it into a waistband So fold it in half and then I'm going to sew right down these edges with a 1/2 in seam allowance Now I'm also using orange thread because you will actually see the thread when I sew it to the skirt I've already threaded my bobbin Now I'm just threading the top of the machine And this is real easy to do You just follow the little numbers and the guides on your machine And the thing that I really love about my Baby Lock is this automatic needle threader Once I get to that point I just push a button Boom It's already threaded Okay I'm ready to sew Place your elastic on your machine and just sew down I'm using actually a straight stitch here with a half inch seam allowance Do a little forward and back stitch at the beginning and end And cut your threads I also love this automatic thread cutter on my machine No scissors needed Okay Now what we want to do is to open that seam up just like that And we're going to sew a top stitch down this side and then a top stitch down the other side That'll make it look really nice Go over to your machine Sew down one side I'm sewing about I don't know a quarter of an inch from that main seam Flip it over and do the other side [Music] Okay that looks really nice Now we're ready to attach it to our skirt Now before I attach that elastic I want to finish off the raw edges of this waistband That will help with wearing and washing over time So what we're going to do is just fold this raw edge over to the right side of the fabric and iron it in place about I don't know a/ quart of an inch And I know that's going to feel a little funny Your natural instinct is to want to fold it under But what's going to happen is that when we take our elastic we're going to lay it right over that edge and it will be enclosed all the way around So just keep ironing Since we're only folding over about a/ quart of an inch it shouldn't be too difficult Okay Now let's pin our elastic onto the waistband I've got my elastic here and you can see if I place it in here it's a little bit smaller than the area we cut out And that's because we added those extra two inches in the beginning when we figured out our radius But that's perfectly fine What it's going to do is it's going to gather up the fabric ever so slightly into the elastic Okay Grab your first pin and pick a spot on the circle And you want to have this overhang just a little bit so that it covers that part that we ironed under and just pin it in place Then pull the elastic over to the opposite side Do the same thing Pin it in place And then you're just going to cut the difference Go to the other two sides like this Again you don't need to be completely accurate We're going to be pulling and stretching this elastic as we sew And now we have it in four spots We're ready to sew it together You want to select a zigzag stitch on your machine cuz that is a stitch that will stretch with the elastic And then increase your width to I don't know about a 2.5 And then I like to sew with my skirt turned inside out And I like to keep my arm inside like this It helps guide me through my machine So place it underneath Just get it in place And then I'll put my arm back in Okay Here we go And I'm just stretching this elastic with my right hand as I'm sewing My left arm is going to guide that as I go Make sure that you're kind of folding that waistband under as you go as well Okay I made it to my first pin I'm going to take that pin out And now we're going to pull to the second pin If you're making an adult skirt you may want to pin it in more places than just four so that you have smaller areas to stretch from pin to pin For a little girl though or a baby four spots is pretty good Do a little back stitch and let's see how it looks Okay let's turn the whole thing right side out And pretty cute Okay the last thing we need to do is to hem the skirt I've got my skirt turned inside out And as I mentioned earlier it can be a little difficult to fold an iron on a curve So I'm going to make my hem pretty small I'm going to iron it over a quart of an inch all the way around And then I'll fold it over another quarter inch or a half inch whatever works for you and iron that in place So let's do that This part could take a little while It's all ironed now Let's sew it in place I'm using a straight stitch here and I'm sewing about an eighth of an inch from that folded edge do a little back stitch at the beginning And just like the ironing this takes a little while If you have an adult-sized skirt it will take an even extra while you're going Just continue folding these edges under And it is going to feel a little awkward because it's on that curve but you should be able to make it press down smoothly [Music] Okay I made it back to the beginning Do a little back stitch And let's check out our new skirt And there you go How fun is that skirt now let's try it with a double layer I'm making this for my youngest daughter and I've already traced and cut out my pattern pieces The bottom layer is the same way that we cut out our circle skirt before For the top layer I measured up 3 in drew my line because I want the top layer to be 3 in shorter Then I traced that top piece and cut it out I've got my fabric pieces cut here And now we want to start sewing in kind of a backwards order We're going to sew the hems of the skirts first Just as we did before fold the hem of your skirt over a/ quart of an inch and press all the way around Then fold it over another quarter of an inch and press it all the way around [Music] Sew the hem in place for each layer of the skirt Now before we sew the elastic into the waistband we actually want to sew those two layers together at the waist That's going to keep them together and it look really nice and it will keep us from having to iron that edge under First lay your shorter layer down on your table with the fabric facing up Then lay the longer layer on top of that with the fabric also facing up Now I know that sounds completely wrong but trust me it is going to work Now just pin those two layers together in a few spots You don't have to pin everywhere And now we're going to sew those two together with a quarterinch seam allowance Just sew around shifting your fabric slightly as you go Now watch what happens when I take this longer layer push it through the middle and pull it out the other side And look at that Already hemmed and almost ready to sew Let's just press that down so it lays flat Okay we're ready to attach our elastic I have the elastic here which I've sewn together the ends And now we want to pin it to the skirt similar to how we did before We don't need to fold anything under We can just overhang about a/ quart of an inch and pin it in place Pull it across to the other side Then pin the two sides and sew all the way around with a zigzag stitch And there you go You just made a double layer circle skirt Your daughter is going to love it For more ideas and tutorials visit my website made everyday.com And for more information on sewing machines visit babylock.com where it's all for the love of sewing I'll see you next [Music] time Heat Heat [Music]