This summer Clara went to a birthday party for a friend. And in classic busy-mom-style, I procrastinated finding a gift till the very bitter end. So I took my own advice and remembered that it’s faster to sew a skirt than drive to the store! Right??
Pretty much always.
Unless you live next door to Target.
Which…I wish I did. And wish I didn’t.
(sigh)
Let’s talk about skirts.
I picked out a few fabrics for Clara to choose from. And for being 4 years old, she’s very opinionated and also very observant. She notices subtleties in hairstyles, and has pointed out when someone at church wore the same thing two weeks in a row.
Haah. That little Clara.
I knew she would be love picking out fabric.
And deep in my heart I hoped she would pick the same one I would have picked.
And she did!
A beautiful Dotted Swiss fabric, in watermelon pink.
Perfect decision Clara! (though it was hard to part with. But I knew it would be perfect for very gathered Simple Skirt)
Dotted Swiss is light-weight, almost like a voile and is such a dreamy fabric.
In fact, I used some vintage Dotted Swiss for my very first blog post ever….back in 2008. Oh man, what an old post! The kids are so young. And the photos are so bad.
I’m glad we all make improvements over the years.
And I think these simple skirts are improving as well.
This time I made the skirt almost 3 1/2 times her waist-size, which really only worked because the fabric is lightweight. If the fabric had been thicker, I don’t think I could have gathered it up as much I needed to. A better option there would be to add a separate waistband, as I’ve done in the Market Skirt (another old post!) Cause with all this fabric being pushed around, it can be difficult to keep the elastic from twisting. I actually had to stop 1/2 way through and start over because I could tell the elastic had rolled and twisted.
But good things are worth the effort.
And I LOVVVVVE how it turned out.
So simple.
So sweet.
And again, so hard to part with.
But I know her little friend loved it as much as we did.
She may have made this same crazy Dotted Swiss fabric face.
The best way to keep your skirt wrinkle-free after washing+ drying is to hang it up, spray with water from a squirt bottle, and let it dry over night. This is my favorite method of “ironing”.
If you’re new to making skirts or want to mix it up a bit, try out these variations as well:
