Creating a Circle Skirt

Every month (okay, more like every other month at the current rate) Ben and I host a group of friends in a murder mystery dinner. We always have it at our place because almost everyone else still lives on campus and let's face it, there's not enough space in those places to keep both furniture and people. We do rotate who brings the food and this week it was Rebbecca and Steven's turn. We had yummy fried chicken (homemade!) with mashed potatoes, biscuits and other yummy stuff. We use the boxed "How to Host a Murder Games" and this month the theme was '50's . Past themes have included 20's yacht party, toga, and old west (my personal favorite). I decided that I needed to actually make a costume for this one because I needed a circle skirt.

Okay, okay, need doesn't really cover the actual relationship I have with circle skirts. I suspect that there is an innate need in every small child to wear a garment that one can twirl in. Case in point, my sister has some friends whose young son Samuel's favorite activity is wearing a circle skirt and spinning around in circles while carrying his sword. My wedding dress (which, I might add, I designed) included a double circle skirt, when I was little my favorite thing to wear when playing dress up was a pink circle skirt that my Mom made me, and my all time favorite movie costume was Lisel's pink dress (with circle skirt) from the Sound of Music. Also, I purchased quite a bit of white and black linen years ago to make a black skirt and a white skirt which meant that I could knock out at least one of my unfinished projects.


Making a circle skirt is actually pretty easy. This site and this site both have some very good tips for making circle skirts. I didn't just want a plain skirt, though, so I sketched out some possible designs using the black and white fabric. I felt very project runway-y (very make it work).



It took two evenings to make although it should only have taken one because my sewing machine finally pooped out on me. I spent a couple of hours trying to fix it but alas my abilities were no match for the tension spring and I finally gave up and borrowed my Mom's ancient but far more reliable machine.



I'm not going through step by step instructions because those would be covered better and far more thoroughly by other blogs, but everybody loves pictures so here's the assembly process. There were eight panels which meant eight of these triangle shapes and eight of the rounded bit at the bottom.

The pieces when put together looked like this:

I used a grosgrain ribbon for the waist band which made the whole thing really easy. Then to finish the hem, I used plastic horse hair which gives the hem more shape. I also made a petticoat of sorts out of some really cheap curtain material and a belt out of the black linen.

Final results, not bad.

This is me standing with Ben. His character was the school jock and mine was an FBI agent and former homecoming queen (a title which I may or may not have earned fairly). The best part about this costume, however, was the twirling factor.