Sutures & Sandpaper: Twirly Pettiskirt Tutorial

This is a super quick post to share an idea I had. I have been wanting a pettiskirt for E to wear when taking photos of her dresses. The idea to use the Boo! DYO Twirly Skirt pattern as a jumping off point has been sitting in my mind for so long. Recently I decided to just do it.

So, this is a tutorial on how to modify the twirly skirt pattern to make a cute pettiskirt. I love the Twirly Skirt pattern and have made so many of them for miss E.

I have a confession to make... I have, once or twice put two or three twirly skirts on E under a dress to give it the right amount of fullness... but now I don't have to :)

I suggest using a light fabric like lawn for this, though I'm sure it would work just as well with other fabrics. I used lawn for the bottom tier, but I was stash busting, so I didn't have enough. I used up some white quilting cotton for the upper two tiers.

I used the size 2 "Twirly Skirt With Contrast" measurements. I used the exact measurements for the waistband and skirt parts, but I cut two lots of the skirt part (ie four pieces). Then for the bottom ruffles I cut three pieces half the length of the contrast hem measurement and the full width of fabric (44" in my case). For larger sized skirts this will have to be wider, I would suggest at least double the width of the middle skirt so it gathers nicely.

The reason for it being half the length is because I didn't double it over.

So:

Waistband Piece x2 (as per pattern)

Skirt piece x4 (two x the pattern)

extra long contrast pieces (four separate lots each about double the total width suggested but half the length)

So, now I had cut enough for one waist band, two skirts pieces and four extra wide contrast pieces. Then I sewed my bottom tier pieces together. I finished the bottoms of each of these with a rolled hem on my overlocker. Then (also using my overlocker) I gathered the top edges of each of them and pinned two to each of the skirt pieces' bottom edge and sewed them on. I made the middle skirt piece as per the instructions (twice) and attached them to the waist band and finished the skirt as a normal twirly skirt.

Here is a pic of a modified Hummingbird dress without, and then with the pettiskirt under it to show the difference it makes.

...and one more super ruffly pic because they look cool :)

For even more fullness you could add another middle skirt piece with two ruffle bottom pieces to it.

I have been working on some very cool pattern testing recently that I can't wait to share with you when the testing is complete. You will NOT want to miss it!

In the meantime, I'll pop back with a post of all the little things I've made recently but not had time to write a post about.

Please let me know what you think :)

Kerry xx

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Little add on... I decided to make a pink pettiskirt using the same technique. The only difference is that I split the waistband part to use an extra colour. I used Lawn for all of this one and chose four shades of pink. I wanted it to get lighter as is went down and then darker again towards the inner layer.

And here are some photos :)