Make it up as you go along skirt for Miss Alethea

Amelia has been learning recorder at school which she loves and is suprisingly good at! We have had a rather odd approach to paying for the lessons. As these are private lessons they are not covered in her school fees. Rather than paying a weekly fee the music teacher has suggested a barter type system and I am making her daughter a skirt, a night dress and a music bag with us paying for the material, a far swap I think! Alethea is also 'learning' sewing from me, although I am struggling to knwo how to teach her as I am, for the most part, self taught. I did do sewing at school and did well at it but the things we made were square things and not the most practical or skill generating.

With the lead up to Christmas being very busy and a pile of personal projects on the go I have only so far managed to do the skirt. Alethea had a big part in the making of this, she chosethe fabrics, helped sort the order of the layers out, determined the length of each layer and the finished skirt, putting the thread on the bobbin and doing some of the gathering. She was initially supposed to help with some of the sewing but the lure of jumbo chalk and a concrete driveway saw her otherwise occupied! She wanted a REALLY long skirt and that is what she has!

I used Alethea's hip measurement and multiplied x 1.8 to get the length of the teirs, i was going to use x 1.5 but as she wanted a super twirly skirt I went with a longer teir. I am not entirely happy with the top tier ratio but (and in the nicest possible way) even though I added 3" to the hip measurement it was quite tight across her bum and it would have been uncomfortable to wear. She ditched the skirt she turned up to our place in and wore this one to her Great Grandmother's 100th birthday party!

And we are happy to report it twirls rather spectacularly!

And, when that top teir is too tight we can take it off and turn the 2nd teir over for an elastic casing and have a slightly shorter skirt and a mum has got to be happy with getting more wear out of a bit of clothing!