Julie Finn
Vintage tablecloths and bed sheets are a great fabric to use for sewing a circle skirt, unless you’re trying to sew your kid a circle skirt from an old Charlie Brown sheet.
If you use the traditional, easy-peasy way to sew a circle skirt, then Charlie Brown will be upside down on half the skirt–boo!
Directional fabrics, including children’s novelty sheets, require a slightly different, and only a little more complicated, method to sew a circle skirt with nothing upside-down.
Here’s how to make your kid a circle skirt where Charlie Brown ALWAYS faces the right way:
Although circle skirts are typically so easy to sew that no pattern is required, you’ll want to go ahead and make yourself a paper pattern if you’re sewing a directional, novelty print, because this will allow you to piece your skirt however you need to preserve the graphic’s direction.
To make the pattern:
- Take the hip measurement, and add an extra inch or two to this number for ease. Plug this number as the circumference into a circle calculator to find the radius.
- Starting at one corner of a square piece of paper, mark that radius in several spots, all measured out from that one corner. Connect the dots, sketching out a quarter-circle in the process. Cut off the corner of the paper to this quarter-circle, and you have the top of your pattern piece.
- Take the measurement from the waist to the desired length of the skirt, and add extra for your desired method of finishing the bottom hem of the skirt.
- Starting from the waist quarter-circle, measure out that length in several spots. Connect the dots, sketching out another, larger quarter-circle in the process. Cut off the bottom of the paper below this quarter-circle, and you have your entire pattern piece.
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