Summer of Skirts - The Cupcake Skirt

This skirt didn't turn out quite as planned. I didn't intend for it to be so... cupcake-y. And I guess by that I mean poofy. Part of the reason why the top is so puffy is because I used muslin for the whole thing. If you want to avoid that, get some cotton gauze for the top part or an equivalent fabric. Anyway, here it is - the cupcake skirt!

What you need:

- bleached muslin: I used a yard and half, but it depends on your size.

- unbleached muslin: 1/2 yard

- enough elastic to fit around your waist

Sorry about the horrible pictures; my camera died so I used my roommate's and obviously had no idea what I was doing.

Step 1: Cut out the main skirt piece. For this you'll want to follow the basic skirt tutorial, but you'll want the skirt to be less full and puffy. Also, it helps to contour the skirt a little so it's more a-line (so, make it a little narrower on top). This will keep it from being to puffy on the top around your hips.

Step 2: Now, measure the bottom of your main skirt piece (just one of the pieces). Multiply that by two, and then again by 1.5. Cut out 2 ruffles each from the unbleached muslin and the bleached muslin measuring the above by 2 inches.

Set aside the remainder of your bleached muslin - you will use this for the upper ruffle part of the skirt later.

Step 3: Sew the sides of the main skirt part together. Gather each of the strips you cut out to the width of the skirt, and pin a bleached ruffle on to the bottom of the skirt -about an inch away from the edge of the skirt. Now, sew the ruffle to the skirt.

Step 4: Repeat with each of the ruffles, alternating bleached and unbleached. Make sure you sew each ruffle on low enough so that it covers the seam of the previous ruffle.

Once all 4 ruffles are on, your skirt should look like this:

Step 6: Now for the upper ruffle. Measure the length between the top of the last ruffle you've sewn and the top of your skirt, and add half an inch. Cut out a piece of bleached muslin that measure that by 1.25 times the width of the skirt. You don't want much more than that; otherwise your skirt will be super puffy like mine was. Once again, you might want to cut a bit of an a-line to this piece to help with the puffiness. Sew the sides together and gather the top - it should look like it's own little skirt now.

Step 7: Finally, sew the top ruffle to the skirt! Make sure you pin it well first and check to make sure that it covers the top ruffle seam before you sew it.

Step 8: Sew the skirt onto the elastic. If you haven't done this before, basically you stretch the elastic as you sew it to the fabric. You need to pin it all together first though, so you know how much to stretch each section of elastic.

Ta da, you're done! I wore mine with a belt, because I thought it looked kind of funny otherwise. If anyone has any variations on this skirt that turned out a little better I'd love to see them!