DIY Hi-Lo Circle Skirt

Some time ago, while I was perusing ye' olde Joann's, I came across something truly magical. I was walking down that random aisle of just.. things and junk where half of it is miscellaneous sale stuff and the other half is just... uncategorized  craft items? You know that aisle? And something caught my eye:

First thought: Is that plaid I spy?
Second thought: WAIT IS THAT FLANNEL??

Good news, self. It both.

They were just these 3 yard rolls of flannel that were only 5 bucks each, so I got two of them. Fast forward to present day and I finally made a thing:

I thought about making just another regular circle skirt because let's be real- you can never have enough of those. Or at least that's just what I keep telling myself so that I can sleep better at night. This time though, I decided to try out a hi-lo style and I'm per' excited about the result. So here is how it went!

I started off by rolling out my fabric just to see the dimensions and I made a paper pattern. For how to make the paper pattern and do your measurements, you can refer to my post about making circle skirts.

I then [with the help of Kitty] cut out just one quarter of my skirt. How I did this was instead of folding my fabric at all, I laid my quarter-skirt pattern out on just one layer of fabric and cut it out. No folding or anything required.

After cutting out the one quarter, I proceeded to flip and lay my pattern down again and cut out a second quarter. These two regular pieces are what I used for the high front of the skirt.

For the back of my skirt, the "lo" part of the hi-lo equation, I started out by tracing out my quarter-pattern twice right next to each other, flipping halfway through the process so that I traced out a half circle instead of just the quarter circles like I did for the front of the skirt. Now, instead of cutting the exact shape of my pattern, I cut it so that the back angled down further, so that it would create a low effect.

I forgot to photograph this part, but I assembled the skirt by just sewing my two front quarters together and then sewing them to the back half.

With my remaining fabric, I cut out a waistband that was about four inches wide by my waist+2 inches [actually, I think I only did it about an inch and a half bigger than my waist, but two inches is a safe bet if you're worried about it not fitting].

Like with all my waistbands, I folded the fabric in half and ironed it down.

I then opened it back up and folded the edges halfway to my center crease.

I attached the waistband to the skirt by encasing the top of the skirt fabric inside the little refolded waistband and running two lines of straight stitches around the whole deal. I should also note that I cut a line for the zipper in the middle back of the skirt before I attached the waistband.

To finish the skirt off, all I did was insert a zipper, make a matching bandanna for Kitty, and just like that we are matching wonder babies.

Now here, have a baby bird pose. Because we all needed that.

And some sweet hi-lo action. I should really stop taking photos at awful times of day when there is no light left. Shame on you Becca. Stop bringing dishonor to your family.

But anyway, there we have it! This skirt was pretty simple to make, and nothing beats the feeling of being a girly lumberjack child [if you've never tried that aesthetic, I highly recommend it.].


Linkin' up:
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White Blouse Refashion

Is it weird that I did not own a single plain white blouse before getting this shirt to refashion? I feel like there might be something wrong with that...

Ah well, the situation has been remedied, with a twist kind of?

I got this shirt from the thrift store for like a dollar or something, but it was way too big and lifeless on me. So after an afternoon of work and playing around with weird ideas, I think this is a much improved version:

Can you def tell that I got this over the summer and then let it sit on my refashion pile for forever? That's how I function.

I started by first putting the shirt on inside-out and pinning it in so that the overall fit was better. (Take note of that ominous black shape in the corner. Take a wild guess as to what happened next.)

Ah yes. Ah good. No sewing project is complete without Kitty putting his large body over top of everything. Wow.

After sewing up the sides, I folded up the collar and added a matching white button in line with the other buttons on the shirt. I also added a button hole on the other side of the collar, making sure the shirt would lay flat before cutting it out. I did the stitching for the button hole by hand because let's be real. I'm too much of a giant baby to try and add the hole by machine.

Using my pinking shears, I cut off the extra fabric from the sides of the shirt where I stitched it earlier. And here was where I decided to go a little different than just having a plain white blouse:

I took those extra pieces of fabric and right sides together, I pinned them and stitched the bottom and the pinked (is that even a term?) sides and left the tops open.

Then all I had to do was flip them right-sides out and top stitch all the way around.

Lastly, I just took the tie pieces, tucked them under the collar and hand stitched them on.

Aaaand, much improved now I'd say. My roommate gave me that brooch and I thought it would be perfect with this so why not. Like it looks fine just tied, but yeah. Fancy brooches are legit, right?

Linkin' up:
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