On Trend Friday–Tulle Skirts

This weekend we have my husband’s work holiday party.  When I was trying to come up with something to wear, I kept seeing these pictures of tulle skirts everywhere.  I thought it was a really easy and inexpensive skirt that would work great for a holiday party, so I jumped on board with the idea.

My first mistake was that I ordered the fabric online to include the amount of yardage before I fully read through any of the tutorials.  I had just assumed I would make a gathered waist and I would have plenty of yardage.  I had also envisioned doing a chiffon layer with lots of tulle underneath.  I got 3 yards of tulle and 3 yards of chiffon.  I’ll give you a hint…...it was not enough.

Once I got the fabric and was prepared to sew it together I finally looked at few tutorials like this one from Cotton & Curls.

Once I saw all the tutorials were for circle skirts, which helps keep the bulk down around your waist, I quickly noticed I did not have near enough fabric.  In fact once I did the math I realized I had to run to the store and get 12 more yards of tulle.  I also realized I was not going to be able to overlay the chiffon and instead it would go under the layers of tulle.

I was going to have to sew my tulle together, since the length of skirt I had chosen did not lend itself to the easier cutting version.  I thought I would try out transparent thread, so that you wouldn’t be able to see that the tulle was sewn together.  After an hour of fighting with the transparent thread and only accomplishing one seam, I decided the stubborn thread wasn’t worth it, and just used ivory to match the tulle.  If you get up really close you can see the thread, but most people will never notice it.

Except I haven’t even begun to tell you about the hardest part of making the tulle skirt.  Cutting 15 yards of tulle.  A huge nightmare.  I mean huge nightmare.  All I can say is if you take on this type of a skirt, be prepared to pin the tulle together and have a very luge cutting surface to lay it all out on.  Or maybe find out exactly the yardage you need for each skirt layer.  I had a total of 6 layers for my skirt, 4 tulle, 1 chiffon, and 1 lining.  In my instance I needed 4 yards for each layer.  I should have had the fabric store cut my tulle pieces into 4 yard increments.  Then I could have just cut each layer out of that.  Instead I was trying to stack up multiple layers of tulle that were all attached together and not laying flat.  Like I said, a huge nightmare.  (If anyone else did the math, yes you would see in the end I had some funky layers underneath that were not exactly cut out of 4 yards.  Again do the math and find out how much you need before you order/buy the fabric).

Also find out the exact length you want before you cut out the fabric.  Because my cutting was going so horrible, I left everything long so I would hopefully not mess anything up.  In the end, I kept cutting and cutting, sewing and sewing to get all my hems in the correct location after I had attached the skirt to the waistband.  And the whole while, upset with myself for not cutting it out correctly the first time.

So what did we learn?

1.  Find a tutorial you want to follow and get everything measured out for your body size and skirt length, then figure out how much fabric you will need to accomplish this.

2.  Find out how to correctly use transparent thread on your sewing machine, or just skip it and use a matching color – no one will notice.

3.  Get your fabric cut into sizes that correctly correspond to each skirt layer.  Cut each layer individually and to the correct length.

4.  Assemble and sew your skirt according to your tutorial of choice.

5.  Go out and celebrate in your new party ready skirt!

Speaking of number 5 – what to pair with my new skirt with is my currently dilemma.  I ended up having quite a few choices to pull from.

Somebody please help me decide!  I know the middle two choices in each row are out….but I really can’t decide between the rest.

And realize that in these shoes, I will also be sitting a lot of the night.  I have a huge love/hate relationship with high heels!