First dressmaking item (and it's wearable)

I stocked up on some cheap practise fabric (aka duvet covers and pillowcases from charity shops) and decided the easiest piece of clothing to make would be a circle skirt.

I didn't use the helpful By Hand London circle skirt app (calculator), just because I wanted a different length, but followed another of Annika Victoria's tutorials. I love her just-get-in-there-and-have-a-go attitude, you can do it! She's good at mentioning how to fix mistakes too (useful). Watch her half circle skirt and circle skirt dress tutorials to see the making of the skirts in action (pause so you can figure out the calculations!), and the first shows you three different ways to hem so pick your favourite. However, I consulted  By Hand London on this and chose their #1 method, which was easy peasy but needed patience as the hem of a full circle skirt is very very long (will try a half circle next time).

Tadaaaaaaaa...........

My first clothing make. Love how the skirt lies. The fabric is not bad for an old duvet cover!

The only thing to watch out for with the blog directions in the birdeemag is that she forgot to say make the slit for the zipper shorter (to take into account joining on the waistband), but that's explained in the comments at the end. (I cut it too long but it was easily sewed up again).

And the back........

My first zipper insert, Annika's method was really straight forward to follow.

I 'designed' the skirt to sit low down on my hips, but this looked silly once it was made so I took it in an inch either side on the waistband to sit higher up (following tips from Annika and just using a straight stitch). My waistband ended up an inch shorter than designed too (due to drawing wonky lines + wonky cutting) so the skirt is shorter than intended, but still ok. 

Look I'm wearing a secondhand duvet cover!

It's great for twirling too (just watch out on a windy day).