Pleated girl's skirt

Hi! Long time no post... the school holidays have kind of thrown me off routine lately, as they always seem to. And a heap of other little things have been getting in the way (that I won't bore you with) but also a not-so-boring fabric-based exciting crafty project has been sucking my time up. I'll share it with you as soon as I have some decent pics... but for now I thought I'd show you a skirt I made for my big girl a while back...


I had pinned this cute tutorial from Madame Zsa Zsa a while back, and finally decided to try it. The instructions are not in english but there's a cute little hand drawn diagram and pics, so that was enough to get by on.

Basically it's just a rectangle of fabric, measuring about 3 times the circumference of the child's waist, plus a few centimetres added on for the side zip. The length is up to you. To make it up you insert the zip, pleat the waist, finish the waist with a length of bias binding (long enough to hang over and tie into a bow). Then finish the hem however you like. I folded it under twice and hand stitched it, but you could machine stitch or use more bias binding.

I love the cute, simple styling and the lovely detail that the binding gives, and in my opinion it's a perfect little skirt for an active girl. Mine went scootering in hers after our photo shoot (not such a successful shoot though - oh well!). It could also be dressed up for a more formal look, using different fabrics and bindings.

I'm very keen to make more of these skirts. They'd be great for using up spare bits of stash fabric (a colour block panelled version might be nice). And seeing as it's KCWC time again soon - woo hoo! - I'm positive there will be more. Are you participating in KCWC this time? The timing is good for me so I'm planning to. Fingers crossed for no sick children or disasters of any kind that week!