Purple Circle Skirt

My mom just participated in her first 5k. Huge kudos to her! For her race I made her a light weight runner skirt. I made a similar one for myself for my first Run Disney race last year so I figured why not it would be fun!

Mom picked a purple stain like fabric (I can’t remember the type of material it was) that would match the rest of her running outfit. After a couple of hours wandering the aisles of JoAnn’s we determined it was the winner because it was supper lightweight and flowed well. (I am not complaining about spending hours in the fabric department of JoAnn’s. I can also spend hours in Barnes and Nobel.)

I used a free hand pattern that I found on Pinterest. I use this tutorial for the basic instructions on how to draft out and sew the skirt. I was unsure of what length to make it, so I went a little long because you can always make it shorter but never longer. I sketched the pattern onto the fabric with an air soluble pen. (If you don’t have one of these pens in your sewing arsenal I highly recommend you get one stat. They are great to have on hand as they help you mark tailoring marks on fabric quickly, much like tailor’s chalk but so much easier. You can purchase one of these pens here.)

After cutting the fabric, I realized I made a small error in my measurements, instead of cutting one continuous circle (like I had intended) I ended up with two half circles. No big deal because I now just have two side seams.

Note: I did not iron my fabric during this whole process, a big no no, which is probably had a couple of hick ups in the end. Always iron and pre wash your material. (I know better)

Once the seams were in place I got to test out my new serger that my wonderful husband purchased for me at Christmas time. This was so much simpler than my previous experiences with sergers and not knowing what went where or why there were so many spools and loops. I really had no idea. I currently us a Brother 1034D serger. Love it, supper simple to use and perfect for a newbie to surging like me.

Once everything was surged on the sides, I added the elastic to the waist. With this I did a sewn in elastic waist band. I feel like I should have went with the traditional route with this slick fabric however this is my new favorite sewing method for elastic waist bands and I am dieing to perfect it.

I finished the skirt with a narrowed rolled hem. This was the most troublesome part of this whole skirt. Not only was the fabric supper slick but it kept jamming in my machine. The jamming could have been user error as I was using a new presser foot but I have yet to figure this part out. The new presser foot that I used was a Distinctive Narrow Rolled Hem that I purchased off of Amazon. It was not too difficult to figure out (as intimidating it looked) after watching a couple YouTube videos. In the end it was not a huge success but it was not a huge fail either. I know with more time and practice I will become better at it just like the serger.

In the end I had one happy mom and runner. Above is her in her new skirt trying to decide what outfit to wear. I couldn’t be more proud of her that she completed her first 5k race this month and I hope we can do a run together in the future. Perhaps a RunDisney race next year. 😉