Wedding Blog

Today I’m going to use a circle skirt pattern I made on Tuesday to make a crinoline. The picture above is a little scary, but I promise that I’m wearing a slip underneath and the whole thing is meant to be an undergarment.

Below is my technique for making a circle skirt pattern from scratch. For the single pattern piece, I’ll be using a piece of fabric from a bolt that I bought for $5 from a going out of business sale. It’s a heavier cotton and about 48 inches in width, so it’s a good size for a knee-length skirt for someone of my height.

First, I measured out 45 inches so that I would have a square to work from. I folded the piece of fabric into quarters so that I could mark the center with a piece of tailor’s chalk. Using a yardstick, I measured out the distance to one of the sides and marked that off. Then, moving in a circle, I rotated my yardstick around the center point and made a 48 inch wide circle.

Following the markings, I cut out my circle. Next, I cut out my center hole. To figure out how big it should be I used the circumference equation, circumference = 2(pi)r. I substituted my waist size for the circumference and solved for r and got about 4 inches. I’ll be using elastic to secure my future skirt, so I’ll make the opening a bit wider. If I were going to use a zipper, I’d just cut part of the skirt open.
Tulle was on sale last week, so I bought about 7 yards of black and 7 yards of blue (75 cents a yard! Yay!). I was originally planning on making a crinoline out of just one of the colors, but it’s the cheap stuff, so I ended up using all of both so that I wouldn’t end up with a sad, limp crinoline.

First I cut my tulle into 45 inch squares (I ended up with 8 total) and laid them over my circle skirt pattern one by one, and pinned them down. It’s winter and there’s a lot of static around, so it’s best to lay each layer down and resist shifting them around.

After cutting out the donut shape of the skirt, I pinned the middle together and basted to keep all 8 layers lined up. Next, I cut out a piece of elastic that was just a little shorter than my waist measurement.

I sewed the elastic to the skirt, leaving the first two inches free, and stretched the elastic as I sewed.

When I got to the last three inches of elastic I sewed it to the first three inches, right sides together and clipped the excess. I then sewed the remainder to the skirt. All done!