Color Me Border-Print Skirt: A Tutorial

Have you tried playing with Color Me fabric yet? I got my hands on a few yards of it (thanks, Hayley!) and had so much fun! I knew I wanted to try coloring it as if it were a border print, and from one yard of Princess Paisley print I made three size 6 girls skirts! I took two of them to a lunch date with a friend and THREE HOURS later I looked at my watch and realized I was about to miss school pick-up. Ladies who lunch problems, eh? We talked later about how therapeutic it was – and, you know, not as slippery-slope-y as chocolate or a glass of wine. Who knew? Even the wait staff commented that they were jealous as they passed by. And… they passed by a LOT over the course of 3 whole hours.

If you haven’t tried it yet, obviously, I think you should give it a go. And today – I’m sharing how I made the 3 skirts so that you can whip these up and get to the coloring too.I’m guessing you can get these done in an hour if you’re an experienced seamstress, maybe 2 for someone just getting started.

Supplies:

• 1 yard 44/45″ wide shell fabric (here it’s Princess Paisley, affiliate)
• 1 yard 44/45″ wide lining fabric (can skip the lining if you like and turn the top edge for a casing instead!)
• Elastic
• Safety pin or bodkin to pull you elastic through
• Scissors
• Sewing machine

Here’s how to do it!

1. Use this prewash method. That one seam then serves as the side seam in 3 of skirts! Winning! 
2. Use a yard of solid white fabric to line each skirt, sewing the side seam the same way that you did for step 1. If you want to skip the lining, no biggie. Just means you’ll shorten the overall length a bit to create a casing in step 6.
3. Cut both tubes of fabric into equal thirds. That’ll give you three 14.5″-ish skirt lengths. You can easily make these shorter for littler girls without having to change the width, just changing the waist elastic length will adjust the waist fit just fine. 
4. Hem the bottom edges of both the lining and the shell. A rolled hem works well, a simple flip and a second flip of the fabric works well too. Trim or hem the lining so that it’s at least 1/2″ shorter than the shell.
5. Slide the lining inside the shell, right sides together. Stitch them together at the top with a 1/2″ seam allowance.
6. Flip them right-side-out. Stitch 3/4″ from the top edge to create a casing for the elastic, leaving enough space to thread the elastic through.
7. Thread the elastic through, attach the ends and close the gap! DONE!

More Resources:

• If you’re not sure how long to cut the waist elastic, check this post for some help.
• If you’re not sure what you want your skirt’s finished length to be, check this one!Have you tried Color Me fabric yet? If you have, I’d love to see what you’ve made? Drop a link in the comments!