Creativity | Sewing | Sewing for the girl

Sewing with chiffon knit

February 8, 2012

I did end up getting a few more dresses sewn up, so I will post my other outfit that I made for Anya last week.  No pictures of her in it, yet.  I’m sure I will get some this summer, though.

I bought some chiffon knit on fabric.com to sew up some cute little skirts for the girl…or me.  One of the two. 😉  Anya had liked this skirt, so I decided to tackle it with some chiffon knit.  She also had a similar skirt that I bought her last year at Costco.  I used that as my template.

Chiffon knit is NOT the same as regular chiffon.  I have some regular chiffon for a fancy dress for her and it is slippery and I know it will be super fun to work with (i.e. super fun = not fun at all).

The chiffon knit wasn’t all that difficult to cut, and since it is a knit synthetic you don’t need to hem all the edges.  Score!  The construction on it was similar to the construction on this skirt.  I used the chiffon knit as the base of the flounces.

  1. Draw up skirt base pattern and make sure the flounces are the same length of the hemmed based.
  2. Cut everything out.
  3. Sew the side seams on the base and hem it.
  4. Sew the flounces down one side (right sides facing), flip it over and top-stitch it.  Do this for all 20-some flounces. (It was tedious, but the results are rather cute!)
  5. Hem the lining skirt.
  6. Sew up the bike shorts and hem.
  7. Attach all pieces together at the waistband.  I used the bike short fabric for the waist piece.  I sewed the elastic in the channel and attached everything together on the sewing machine and then serged the edge.  It was a bit tough wrangling everything together, so be patient to get it right.  Make sure the flounces aren’t caught in the seam.

I lined it with some pink swimsuit fabric since I didn’t have a nylon lycra knit that matched.  It was a b*tch to sew with, so I’m not sure it will be a swimsuit.  My machine didn’t like it and was skipping stitches.  I was going to make a ruffled up swimsuit that she wanted, but if my machine can’t sew a few simple lines then that is not going to work.  I’ll have to pick up a different fabric for her swimsuit.

I made sure to put bike shorts underneath it, so it is monkey-bar friendly.

The top is made of the same fabric as the bike shorts.  I sewed a bunch of flounces down the front and in the arm-hole binding.

A cute little outfit! 

  1. INCREDIBLY cute!!!! Great job! I wouldn’t have bothered with the stitched in bike shorts, I would have made her wear some underneath. You are such a cooooool mum!!!!

  2. That outfit is adorable. You are so ahead of the game. I can’t believe you are already sewing for the summer.

  3. So, as “super fun” as that was to sew – it looks really amazing. I love how you say “monkey bar friendly” because I TOTALLY get it!

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