Rainbow parties seem to be the big hit these days. My friend, Stephanie, had a colorful party for her daughter's 4th birthday this past weekend. You can see how much love and care Stephanie pours into every. single. detail of her parties.
I wanted to make MissS a rainbow skirt to go with her rainbow shirt from AmyT.
Being me, I can't take things quite too literally, so I designed a skirt based on roy g biv.
I started out with a selection of ginghams. I took a deep breath and sucked it up that they were not all exactly the same size squares. This was not easy for me, but I pushed through.
I dug out a bunch of rick racks and various colorful trims and tossed them on the gingham stack. However none of them seemed just right. Instead, I made a very long strip of fabric with the orange gingham on one side and the yellow gingham on the opposite side. I sewed the strips together, end to end then on top of each other. I think I ended up with 3 44" widths X 2.5" X the two colors.
I stitched them together then turned them right side out. Then I started to ruche the strip. I don't know if you can see it in the picture here but there was a nice little peek a boo of the yellow from under the orange strip.
The red panel was doubled and folded in half to allow for the casing and the top of the lining. (9" X 40") I used 2X (20") the waist for the red panel.
2X the red panel for the green, blue (4 " X 80") and 6" X 80" for the navy.
I sewed the g,b,n panels together with a 1/4" seam allowance, pressed up and topstitched in place.
I pleated (yes, with my pleater) the top of the green panel and the bottom of the navy panel for easy gathering.
I stitched the green to the outside layer of the red with a regular seam.
Then I sewed a casing for the waistband and inserted 1" elastic in the casing.
To make the skirt bubble, I sewed a 9" long X 40" wide piece of white batiste into a tube. I sewed the bottom of the navy to the batiste, gathering the 2:1 ratio navy to plain fabric. I pressed under 1/2" on the remaining red section. Then I pinned the two red layers together, sandwiching the batiste inside the seam and top stitched all those layers together. This is under the ruching.
Unfortunately, the skirt turned out a little long for MissS but she didn't seam to mind. I suspect she will be wearing this same skirt for the next five years. Mama said she liked it so I guess that is all that matters.
Happy 4 finger Birthday, my little rainbow girl!
maggieb!
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