A Foofy Skirt Tutorial

Who doesn’t love a foofy skirt?

If you have spent any time at all on my blog, it will come as no surprise that love circle skirts! They are lovely and swirly to wear and, unlike something with gathers or elastic, they add no bulk to areas severely affected by excessive babies or cake.

I love them so much that last year I designed a project for a dress, made by adding 2 bodice pieces to a circle skirt. This was my Cherry Blossom dress and I love it so much I wear it all the time. I even made a second one in different fabric!

So to do something else a little bit different with a circle skirt, I wanted to make a foofy version using chiffon and layers of net.

I found a lot of tutorials showing how to make a net petticoat, but they all involved at least 9m of net and lots of gathering. Because net naturally sticks out anyway, I wanted to see whether the same effect could be achieved simply by adding several layers of net circle skirt underneath.

I am pleased to tell you that it did work!

The full tutorial for the foofy skirt can be found on the Minerva Crafts Bloggers Network.

These are affiliate links for the stuff I used.
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3m lining fabric  [/1_third]
[1_third] 3m lavender net
Concealed zip[/1_third]
[1_third_last] 3m mint net

 

10 m lilac bias binding

[/1_third_last]

The skirt has 6 layers. Each one is a circle skirt. The top layer is chiffon on the top. Then underneath there are 4 layers of net, alternating purple and green. Then there is a final layer of lining fabric (net can be itchy!).

The hems of the chiffon and the lining are finished with bias binding. The net did not need to be hemmed, yay!

The only tricky spot was the zip. Even using the method I usually do, it was difficult because there were so many layers.

Tips

As chiffon is unstable, use plenty of pins.
It frays quite badly, and as it is a delicate fabric, French seams are probably the way to go. You can find a tutorial for doing French seams here.
When sewing the net, use a wide zigzag.
Measure the side seams of the first layer that you complete, then use this when sewing the side seams on the other layers. This saves having to re-measure every time.

If you like circle skirts and you’d like some ideas of other things you can make using a circle skirt as a starting point, you might like to have a look at my new ebook.

Linking up here.