The Cutest Ruffle-Skirt.... EVER!

Ok, this would be have been a funnier title if you had had some sort of familiarity with our CD collection.

My husband used to be in the habit of buying compilation CDs. I really found this weird when we first met... in the US this wasn't a very common way to sell CDs (at least not to people who didn't spend all their time purchasing things from RonCo off the TV). However, in New Zealand (and based on the number of CDs my husband has from before NZ, apparently the UK too) they're everywhere. Lots and lots of compilation CDs.

"Hard Rock Guitar Songs"
"Pop Music Wedding Songs"
"Crappy Love Songs From The 1980's That Will Make You Wish You Were Never Born (Or At Least Not During The 1980's)"

So anyway, we have this series of CDs from New Zealand called "The Best (insert your type of music or song here).... EVER!" Trust me. This is something of a hyperbolic statement.

Saying that, this really is a cute ruffle-skirt. I've been eyeing it ever since it came out, which was over three years ago (this gives you some idea of the pace of my sewing strategy).



This is BWOF 6-2006 #140. The original pattern calls for a ribbing waistband and batiste ruffles. I decided to go with knit for the ruffles because TLo had two tiered knit summer skirts that she adored but outgrew. My devious plan was to replace the old skirts with something similar in order to ensure that she might actually wear the stupid things. So far, the plan has worked since she seems to really like these two skirts.

This was the first one, made with a heavy white interlock at the waistband (I didn't have any ribbing and couldn't be bothered to try to locate any) and a nice medium-weight interlock print for the tiers.



This really was as easy to sew as BWOF claimed in their little blurb. You cut a rectangle for the waistband, seam it into a tube, fold in half and viola, a waistband. You cut the ruffles as you would normally (i.e. curved strips in two widths), baste together at the top, attach the waist band and serge the whole thing together. You're done! Instant (almost) skirt! Oh, well you do need to finish the hems of the ruffles, which I did with a rolled lettuce hem on my serger. Very very quick to make.

Here's the second version.



This one I added a little more detail, for a few reasons. First was that the fabric was somewhat similar in color to the first skirt. Second (and more importantly) was that I thought the first might be just a shade too short to last long. I had planned on just cutting the tiers a little longer. Except that the fabric I wanted to use only juuuuust fit the pattern as-is. Hmmm... what to do? I really wanted to use up that half-yard of fabric, since I purchased it three years ago to make a baby shirt... uh... for the now five-year-old.

Oh how I miss the days when a half-yard of fabric could make almost anything.

I didn't want to add any bulk to the main body of the skirt by adding an entire third layer of another fabric, becuse the teal knit was really beefy. In the end I decided to add another little ruffle layer to the hem of the bottom tier. To do this, I roll-hemmed a strip of seersucker fabric and gathered it to fit the length of the hem. The strip was measured to be about 1.5" below the hem of the knit ruffle and extend about 1" above the hem. That way I had enough room to attach the strip and still do a rolled hem on the knit ruffle. I used a cover-stitch to attach the strip so the raw seam was covered on the wrong side.





It came out pretty well, although this fabric tends to flip up where it's lettuce-edged.



I don't mind since the wrong side is white and goes with the white hem strip and waistband. Or in any case, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Well, at least she's happy with it...

Today we're continuing on with the Great Uniform Interregnum (because I've been crazy busy this week and trying to get The Little One clothed decently ala The Hannah Andersson SWAP. Also, I'm still sick of uniforms.) This weekend I completed a dress, two pairs of leggings and two skirts, plus cut out five more pairs of leggings that just need to be put together.

Oh how I do love leggings! They're cute! They have one pattern piece! They take twenty minutes to sew together! Will the wonders never stop?? They also have the added advantage of being the perfect bottom-wear for the Little One, who could give JLo a run for her money in the derierre department. I finally get why JLo wears so much lycra. (There's still no excuse for sparkly gold spandex pants- under any circumstance- but I do have great sympathy for the fitting issues involved with the Big Booty and now understand how the magic of lycra can absolve a multitude of fitting sins.)

My plan is to give TLo (Ha! I just realized that works!) a completely, or almost completely, mix-and-match wardrobe. In reality it probably will turn out to be a little more mix than match because, well, frankly, I'm just not that organized. But this summer I let TLo pick out her own fabric (yes. be afraid.) and it is basically coordinated. Mostly by dint of it all being pink.

Really pink.

Very very pink.

And flowery. Really very flowery.

The dress I chose for the SWAP was this Ottobre pattern:

Ottobre 3-2008 pattern #12 (Strawberry Tunic)

I was hoping to knock-off this dress:

Hannah Andersson Tunic Dress

This is what I ended up with:

Well hey. It's actually lavender, not pink. It is flowery, though.

It's very large on TLo. But I'm tired of making clothes for her that she can't wear three weeks later, so everything's just going to have to be a little large for a while. I'm going to make at least two more (maybe a teensy tiny little bit smaller).

In our next edition: the cutest ruffle skirts. Ever!

A Brief Interlude

Today, Gentle Reader (I like to maintain the fantasy that I have Readers), today we will have a short break, an intermission, a pause, a hiatus, an idyll if you will.

Yes, I own a thesaurus. What's it to you?

Where was I? Oh yes, we are proceeding with what I will henceforth call The Great Uniform Interregnum. Otherwise known as "I'm going to write about something else because I'm a little bit tired of uniforms and also I made a dress for my younger daughter (The Little One) and it was a total disaster, but I realized that I have a tip to share with everyone about coverstitch binder feet". Or something like that.

Binder Feet. They suck.

Oooo, that should have been the title of this post. Too late. However, it's a totally true statement. Binder feet do suck, with a suckiness that knows no bounds. There is little in the sewing world I loathe more than binder feet. I base this hatred on cold, hard experience.

I just did a mental reckoning and I have no less than five binder feet, not a one of which works properly. (A wise reader such as yourself might, at this point, be wondering why I continued to buy binder feet after the first two -or even four- didn't work. This, Gentle Reader, is a damned good question.)

I have two binder foot attachments for my sewing machine (which is a Brother, in case you're wondering) and three, count them THREE, for my coverstitch machine (which is a Janome). Fortunately, being the Queen of Cheap, I bought generic feet for my coverstitch machine on eBay, so instead of the hundreds of dollars I could have spent on brand-name feet I only spent about $45 on all three feet total. I guess wasting $45 is better than wasting $450.

(And before you accuse me of being merely inept with binder feet, Gentle Reader, I would like to state for the record that I am, under normal circumstances, a mechanically-inclined type of person. I deal with recalcitrant industrial printing equipment all day, for Pete's sake, and that doesn't cause nearly half the trouble as those evil little binder feet cause.)

Anyway, the long and the short of it is that I have completely (completely) given up using any of these stinking feet. Er... no pun intended. Instead, I do a what-seems-like-it-should-take-longer-than-using-a-binder-foot-but-isn't-when-you-factor-in-time-wasted-on-evil-binder-foot-setup process that is multi-stepped but works perfectly every time.

I thought I'd share.

Step Being the First:

Cut out your binding strip as you usually would. You can do this technique using either a raw-finish or clean-finish strip. My example shows a clean finish.

Step Being the Second:

Your seam width should be wherever the fold of the strip is meant to be (in other words, if you intend to do a clean-finish binding and your finished width is 1/2" -you have a 2" strip- set your seam width to 1/2"). Using a BASTING STITCH, attach the strip to the garment, right sides together. You will be removing all basting stitches when completed.


Step Being the Third:

Press the strip towards the seam allowance, so that the right side of the strip is showing.


Turn over the entire garment so that the right side is on the table. Now fold the raw edge of the strip into the center to meet the center of the strip. Press heavily.


Step Being the Fourth:

Fold the strip again so that the edge of the garment is wrapped (in otherwords, it looks like binding).


At this point, the fabric I'm using will determine if or how much I pin the strip in place. In this case I pinned all the way around the entire edge because I was using jersey knit as my binding and it tended to curl a lot. In other cases I might skip the pinning.


Step Being the Fifth:

Using a basting stitch, stitch through all layers down the middle of the binding strip. Be sure to stitch in a place where your final stitching won't overlap, so it's easy to remove the basting.


Remove the pins. You should now have a completely bound edge basted in place.

Step Being the Last:

Once everything's in place and tacked down, you can take it over to the coverstitch machine (or if you're using a double or single needle on your sewing machine) and stitch it down permanently. The nice thing is you don't really have to adjust anything, you just line up the presser foot so the stitches run down the center of the binding.

When the permanent stitches are in, be sure to remove BOTH basted seams. This will release the edge of the binding so it looks "normal".

(this is a slightly bad example, as my coverstitch machine chose this moment to start skipping stitches)

In conclusion: The only difference between a garment using the traditional binder foot and a garment using this method will be the utter lack of eye-popping, face-reddening, blood-pressure-raising stress on the creator of the second garment. Yes, it does require several more steps than the binder foot method and on paper looks like it will take much more time. This idea fails to take into consideration all the facts, however. You can write it as an equation:

T + F(n) = R

R is the result, where T is time spent, F is frustration trying to get $#*@!* thing to work and n is the incremental increase of F relative to the increase of T, caused by having to adjust and readjust and re-readjust and generally mess with the binder foot eighty times to get it to work correctly.

Using this equation, there is just no rational excuse to use a binder foot. The math says it all.