my sewing experiment of the day – or the two-hour, no pattern skirt

I’ve been hankering after a peasant-style skirt for awhile now, but haven’t taken the plunge and bought a pattern yet.

I got the bright idea to try sewing one without a pattern – after all, they’re just a series of rectangles, gathered and sewn together, right? How difficult could it be to make a simple, three tier gathered skirt?

I pulled out a piece of cotton gauze, 45″ wide and 4 yards long. I cut the fabric into three even 15″ wide pieces along the length of the fabric (so I had 3 strips of fabric, 4 yards long and 15″ wide)

I left one piece as is. I trimmed one yard off of one strip, to make the middle panel and measured one strip and cut it one and a half times my hip measurement.

I basted the bottom and the middle strips along one edge, so they could be gathered easily.

The layers got pinned and sewn together – with a simple elastic waistband and rolled hem.

The skirt took 2 hours to make, from a length of fabric on my cutting table to a finished skirt – and best of all, it looks great on :-)

The moral of the story?  Don’t be afraid to experiment – you can make beautiful things sometimes!

image: C Findlay-Harder