This post is a basic one to do with measuring out a full circle skirt. I'm talking about a full, 'twirly', beautifully feminine skirt that you can incorporate into a dress or just wear as it is. Truth be told, there's no skirt quite so pretty as one you can twirl in! ...Or so I am told by several little girls.
The perks of this style of skirt include the way it drapes, and the fact that you don't have any seams showing! Once you've mastered the measurements of this skirt it's so super easy to attach to a top, or add a zip or some embellishments / details. I won't go into how to do those things in this particular post (except I've included a link to a zipper tutorial later), but you can experiment with them as you get more confident!
Below is a diagram of what we want to create. The dotted square border represents a piece of fabric folded over twice, so this is a quarter of the skirt:
It's easiest to work with the fabric folded into quarters because there's less marking / measuring / cutting :)
Okay!
First, make sure you have your waist measurement and an idea of your desired skirt length.
Your finished skirt will look like a giant donut, and the circumference of the hole in the middle will be your waist measurement.
The first step is to fold your fabric into quarters (like I've mentioned).
Next, you'll need to work out the radius of your waist. If you're a super awesome mathematician you'll probably be able to do that pretty quickly, but if you're not there's a calculator here. Just enter your waist measurement as the circumference and it will work out the radius for you.
Starting at the corner of your fabric that has only folds and no raw edges, extend your measuring tape outwards and mark the radius measurement with a dot. To create the circumference, keep one end of the tape measure pressed to the corner of the fabric and move the other end toward the edges of the fabric in small increments, marking the radius with dots as you go. You should see a curve appearing.
Once you've done this, join the dots together and you've created a curved line that measures a quarter of your waist! Hurrah!
Keeping one side of your tape measure at the corner of the fabric (it might help to pin it!), repeat the exact same process for measuring out the bottom of your skirt. To do this, add the desired length of your skirt to the radius of your waist and measure it out.
For example, if I want a 60cm long skirt and my waist radius is 11cm, I measure 71cm (60 + 11) from the corner of the fabric (where my tape measure is pinned) and repeat the dot-making and curve-drawing process.
If you cut along the curved lines you've created, you'll get something very much like this:
And if you unfold it, you'll get something like this:
And there you have the bare bones - that was super quick, wasn't it?
Once it's all done you can hem the bottom and add a waistband, or put in a zip (great tutorial here). Alternatively, as I mentioned earlier, you can use this for the skirt part of a dress - like I did in the pictures below! How grand!
I hope you found this post helpful! Until next time, have a lovely day! :)
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