How to Make a Chiffon Skirt
In order to make a chiffon skirt, you need to keep in mind that chiffon is a delicate material that must be carefully handled when attempting to use it for sewing. If it's done correctly, the outcome will leave you with a beautiful and sexy skirt to wear either on a wild night out with the girls or a romantic evening in with the man of your dreams. Does this Spark an idea?
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Things You'll Need
- 6½ yards of chiffon
- 1 yard of ¾-inch elastic
- Construction paper
- Matching thread
- Sewing machine
- Serger
- Pencil
- Pins
- Tape
- Scissors
Instructions
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1
Take measurements, both the distance from your hip to the floor and the size of your waist (where you usually wear your skirts). Add 4 inches to your hip-to-floor length (3 inches if it's for a child).
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2
Lay your construction paper out on a flat surface. Tape your measuring tape to one corner of the paper and trace a small arc from one edge to the other, using your hip-to-floor-plus-floor measurement as the radius. Then do the same with the measurement of 4 inches for an adult and 3 inches for a child. Your material should look like a fourth of a doughnut. You've now made a pattern.
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3
Lay out your fabric folded over the "hamburger" way, so the full width is cut in half. Place the pattern against the fold and pin it to the material. Without the pins, your fabric may not turn out even.
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4
Cut the fabric piece. When you open it up, the cut-out material will look like a half doughnut. Repeat this step. You should end up with two half-circles from your fabric.
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5
Serge all the edges of your material. Then sew together the flat edges of the two circles to create a full circle.
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6
Open the quilt binding and hem one of the ends. Sew the binding along the top edge of the full-circled doughnut. Sew closed the quilt binding, but leave a tube for the elastic.
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7
Cut the elastic to the size of your waist plus 2 inches. Pin a large safety pin to one end of the elastic and thread it through the tube.
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8
Take the elastic ends and pin them together to mimic where they would be if you were wearing them, lapsing about 1½ inches. Sew them together.
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9
Cut the bottom of the material so that the skirt is 1½ inches longer than you would normally wear it. Serge the bottom and then hem it with the ½-inch marker on the sewing machine by folding the bottom inward.
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Tips & Warnings
If you find that the chiffon is hard to work with, use a liquid fabric stabilizer to stiffen the edges. You can apply it with a small foam paint brush about a ½ inch into the edge.
If you are planning on using a see-through material, you should have another piece of fabric that is solid. Repeat the step for each of these materials and place them back to back while following the directions.If you do not have a Serger, you can stabilize the edges by doing a zigzag stitch with every other stitch grabbing the fabric. This will fold the edge over and prevent unraveling.
Chiffon can easily snag and should be carefully handled. Try sewing really slowly so that the insertion of the needle doesn't snag on one of the threads.
