Sewing for My Sanity: Excited about twirling

My precious daughter Isabelle loves all the typical little girl stuff - dress up, princesses, pink, sparkles, accessories, dancing, twirling, etc. I have gotten the creative juices flowing and sewn with this super fun twirly skirt for her and two of her little co-princesses, Ruthie and Vivian.

Twirling skirt mania!
This all started with an awesome book my mom bought me last Christmas called, "Sewing Clothes Kids Love"

In the book, there are clothes that just make you smile! The patterns have a ton of possibilities with all of the embellishments that you can add so you can stay simple (and "get her done") or you can go wild with trim galore! The pattern that seemed like a good place to start was the Insa dress.

It is a double layer skirt where each layer (or gore) has 4 equal sections so you can add in as many fabrics as you want. I chose four different fabrics for the top layer

and then one fabric for all four pieces of the bottom skirt.

There are placement guides to help you put in vertical elastic strips on the top skirt to give the scalloped effect. Isn't it cute?

The skirt has a wide waist band that helps you put in a complimentary fabric to the rest of the skirt. I really liked the look of putting the plaid on the angle. This uses up more fabric but it was not that big of a pattern piece.

Can you see the circular beaded things that I appliqued onto Isabelle's skirt (above)? They were special to me because I bought those in Central Asia when I visited my friend Leslie in October. Unfortunately, they disintegrated in the wash. :(

Do you like the ruffle that is sewn on the hem here? The technique is new for me and is called ruching. All ruching means is gathering, ruffling or pleating. I really love how it adds some more femininity to the skirt and helps give a finished look since it is the same fabric as the waste band. I am going to do a post to give some tips on how I did it.

If you look closely, you can see the row of basting stitching that I never took out. I can be really lazy sometimes with those finishing touches!!

After I did the trial run with Isabelle's skirt, I decided to make two more for two little girls that live in Central Asia. One of the girl's mom sews so I put the elastic in the waist casing but left the safety pin attached so the mom could adjust it for the girl's waist size. I don't think the other girl's mom sews, so to avoid the issue of guessing at how big her waist is, I put in a ribbon that she can use to cinch the waist. I hope that works out.