HOW TO DRAFT A CIRCULAR SKIRT

Hi there! I hope you all enjoyed yesterday's blog post on how to thread your sewing machines. For anyone who already sews I'm sure it seems like second nature for you but for our newbie machinists it can be a lot to take on! Hope it helped some of you out! Remember, if you have any queries, you can always drop us a message!

Now a couple of weeks ago I posted some images of little flower girl dresses on our facebook page @hemraisers. I literally can't wait to get started with making some of these dresses so I thought why not make them together?!

Today, I'm going to show you how to draft the pattern for a circular skirt which will give the dress a much fuller look as above. The circular skirt is probably the easiest pattern you can draft and it's one you can do without having to create a basic block first! I'll explain more about basic blocks in the next post but for now, let's get started!!

Creating a Construction Sheet

Creating construction sheets are probably the most important thing you can do in pattern cutting. Construction sheets form the foundations of any pattern you're drafting whilst allowing you to make amendments were needed without having to start completely from the beginning.
To create our construction sheet for the circular skirt, start by drawing two lines as below.

Once you've done this you can start working on the measurements you will need in order to create the circular skirt. The only measurements you need are the waist and the length. Now I'm going to be working with a 54cm waist and a length of 24cm due to age of the dress I will be making however you can use the same process to create a circular skirt for any age or even for yourself.

Once you have your waist measurement, you will need to do some calculations in order to get our first measurement point. Please see the below sum and adapt the waist measurement to suit your pattern;

54 - 2.5 = 51.5 / 6 = 8.6cm (This sum is for a full circular skirt. For a Half Circular you divide by 3)

Now we need to mark off 8.6cm along each line from the point, please see the blue markers on the below image;

To complete the waist measurement, also measure 8.6cm from the center of the point to give you a central point. Now this is where it becomes like "Connect the Dots" keeping your elbow in the same position on the table (don't lift your elbow from the surface) begin to connect the markers in a half circular motion. This has now given you your waist line.

This is where it gets even easier, now using the waist line as a guide, measure the length from this point to create the hem line using the same method as above, for this I will be using my length of 24cm.

Now you have your circular skirt construction sheet. Now draw around the skirt shape ignoring all lines before the waist and after the hem using a coloured pencil in order to outline the skirt.

Make sure you label your construction sheet up appropriately, it will need to state construction sheet so that you know not to cut this out. Now to create you circular skirt pattern piece you must overlay a blanck piece of pattern paper, you should be able to see the the skirt shape underneath the paper due to the coloured pencil. Carefully trace around the shape and walah! You have a circular skirt pattern!

The final step is to add your seam allowance, this will need to be added to the side seam, the waist and the hem. Keep in mind that this pattern piece only shows one half of the front or back panel of your skirt! You will need to cut this on the fold in order to get a full front and back panel. The below image will show where the seam allowance (Red Dashed Line) will need to be added (I've drawn over my original lines using excel so this won't be exactly accurate on the image. Please make sure seam allowance is the same distance from the hem at all points 1/1.5cm);

Cut it out and you're ready to go! I hope you've enjoyed learning how to draft a circular skirt! I'm looking forward to getting this cut out in fabric and showing you all what it looks like!

If you need any help with this, fell free to drop me a message and I'd be happy to help!

Happy Sewing! XOXO