Summer of Skirts - Elastic A-Line Tutorial

This skirt is great, because it is almost as easy as the 20 minute skirt but is more flattering and versatile. I plan on making many more of these! It's also worth noting that my current giveaway (enter to win if you haven't already!) dress features this type of skirt.

What you need:
-elastic - enough to fit around your waist; i prefer 3/4 inch for skirts
-1 yard of fabric if you normally wear a small/medium, maybe a little more if you are large and up
- a yardstick or newspaper or something with a long straight edge


Step 1: Cut along the fold of your fabric, so you have two pieces with the cut fold on one end and the selvage on the other. Then put the pieces back together as they were before you cut them, with the wrong sides together.


Step 2: Now you have a little bit of math to do. Measure the width of your fabric and divide it by three. Mark off the 1/3 point on the top of the fabric and the 2/3 point at the bottom. This is important to make sure your skirt fits: Take the 1/3 measurement and multiply it by 4 - that is how many skirt panels you will have. If this measurement is not at least a few inches bigger than your hips, you will need to do closer proportions. That is, mark of the points at 4/10 at the top and 6/10 at the bottom, for example. Keep trying different proportions until you have something that will fit you - the important part is to keep some of the angle in though.

Step 4: Then, put your yardstick/newspaper/whatever at each of these marks, so you have a diagonal across the fabric. Using this as a guide, cut along the diagonal through BOTH pieces of fabric.


Step 5: You should know have four pieces of fabric. Two should look like the picture below, and two should look like the mirror image of those.


Step 6: This part is optional, but it will make hemming a whole lot easier. Fold the straight edge of each panel over to the diagonal edge, making sure the top corners line up. Mark where the straight edge hits the diagonal edge.

Now, trim the panels with a curve so that the diagonal edge is the same length as the straight edge.


Now I got really bad about taking pictures, but the hard part is behind you!

Step 7: Sew the skirt panels together. It is best if you keep straight edges to straight edges and diagonals to diagonals, but if you did step 6 it won't matter too much. I used french seams (tutorial here) to make mine look more professional. Make sure you press your seams!

Step 8: Now hem your skirt and put the elastic casing in (tutorial here).



What I really love about this skirt is it's pretty versatile: you can wear it up on your waist with a cute belt like this:

Or wear it lower on your hips like this:



Now celebrate your new skirt with some bunny kisses!




Coming up next in the summer of skirts tutorials are a men's button-down shirt to skirt tutorial and waistband a-line!