Sheets to Skirt – –

Have a craft competition – I will enter!  Slight obsession with it all.

Anyways, over at A Craft A Day is the Sew & Tell contest where: All materials used must come from your stash and/or your local thrift store.  The finished product should be an outfit of some sort for you, your child, or whoever. Um, check.

I went with the “from your stash” AND “from the thrift store” because if you’ve been reading this blog long you know I can’t pass up sheets – so much yardage for so little $$.  So I have a stash of sheets, from garage sales, and thrift stores, begging to be used – see, stacked to the ceiling (anyone else have issues folding fitted sheet – ugh!):

Now, what to make – well, at Crystal’s Craft Spot the weekly challenge for this week is make something off your to-do list.  So I combined the two challenges!  Used the sheets to make the Dresden Plate Skirt I’ve had on my To-Do Idea List forever.

So, last week at a thrift store I bought this turquoise swirl sheet thinking I could do something with it.  I get home and see some pink in amongst the folds  – huh??  I open it up – it’s half pink – weird, but bonus (because I know the girls like pink better than turquoise):

Look, it’s printed that way – right in the middle it changes patterns.  The tag says JCPenney Full Flat Sheet – so what, it’s reversible?  One day you have the pink side up by your head, the next day you can flip it and have the turquoise side up?  Whatever, but it makes for great coordinating fabrics for the skirt.  I paid $3 for the sheet. 

For directions on the skirt construction, head over to Crafterhours for The Dresden Plate Skirt Tutorial.  

I changed some things up a bit:
–I only used 14 strips instead of 18 – my girls are 4 and 6 – I wanted it to lay more flat instead of poofy.
–I didn’t hand-sew the hem – are you crazy?!?  I did this “stitch-the-ditch” thing (my mom would be proud that I remember that’s what it’s called) – from the topside, I sewed right into the seam to hold down the lining on the back, about 1 inch up, and you can’t see it on the front because it hides in the “ditch”:

Here’s a picture of it holding down the back.  Do it for every seam on the front – sounds long, but for me, much quicker than hand-hemming.  And yeah, I didn’t clip my points well enough so the lining is bunchy – oh well.

–See the end of the sheet – the pretty finished top edge:

Oh yes, it’s just screaming “I’m a casing” – that’s what I used for my waistband.  I just cut it off and sewed it to the top of my skirt – I’m all about easy.

–I wanted the front to be a flat waistband, not gathered elastic, so I only put elastic in the back of the skirt.  To do this I moved the seam from the back to the side.  First put elastic in until half-way through the waistband.  Zig-zag in place.  This will be one “side seam” – can you see it in the picture? – the left side doesn’t have elastic in it – the right side does:

Then fold the skirt in half and sew the entire seam, top to bottom, making sure the elastic is caught into it.  Then I flipped it right-side out and zigzaged the elastic on the waistband, just so it’d match the other side.

As if all the scallops on the skirt weren’t enough, I thought a cute fashion scarf to match, including scallops, would be great.  Let me tell you – there’s a lot of ironing involved with scallops – a lot.

So for the scarf I sewed the 2 pieces wrong sides together, flipped them right-side out, and ironed them down.  Then I sewed with elastic thread 3 times down the middle.  I was going for shirring (yes, I had to refer to my own tutorial – pathetic that I didn’t remember how to do it) – super important is the steaming part.  Here it is before – barely ruffle at all:

And here it is after I steamed it with my iron – the steam shrinks the elastic thread – so fun to watch!  In my mind I wanted it gathered more, but since it was double-layered, it didn’t gather as much as I wanted – that’s okay, it’s still cute.

See – they love wearing the fashion scarf:

I also made a hair clip to go with it – because why not!  I don’t know if things that have so many matching pieces (skirt, scarf, hairclip) say “wow, so matchy, it must be from a boutique” or “wow, so matchy, your mom must have made that for you from an old sheet” – let’s hope for the first one….

Back View of the skirt – it’s gathered because of the elastic in the back of the waist:

I made this for my 6 year old, but her and my 4 year old have the same size waist, so it fits both of them. Although the waist is a little tall and the skirt is overall a little long on my 4 year old.  But I just got new photo-background-paper, and the older one is at school, so the younger one got in on the picture-taking fun.  Here you can see they both love to pose:

And you can tell my 2 year old likes to join in when the camera’s out – too bad there’s not near as much cute stuff to sew for boys, so he’s outta luck:

Did you notice the hairclip can move from the hair, to the waist (above pic), or even to the scarf (below pic) – so fun!!

DIy Under $5 at A Little Tipsy