DIY Tulle Skirt Tutorial

"A store-bought belt can obscure even the sloppiest of home-sewn waistbands." 

 ~Ancient Chinese proverb

As promised, here is the tutorial for the tulle skirt I sewed for Thanksgiving! I share this with you along with one major caveat: At no point during the making of this skirt did I actually know what I was doing. This will be painfully obvious to those of you with real sewing skills, so please feel free to use this as the most basic of guides and to improve on it any way possible. And I'm sure there are many ways.

Credits: My inspiration for this skirt came from a skirt in Anthro's winter line, and from this Etsy seller. The sewing process is a mix of tips from a great tutorial that this blogger put together, the YouTube videos here and here, and my own experimentation. 

What you'll need (total cost of materials was approximately $30): 

1. Tulle. For each layer of tulle on the skirt you will need a piece four times the length of your natural waist.  So if your waist is 25", you will need 100 inches per layer.  The minimum number of layers you want is probably four.  My skirt had 6 in total - four cream layers underneath and two espresso layers on top.  The tulle I purchased was folded in half on the fabric bolt, and folded was 27" wide, which was just a bit longer than the length of the skirt I wanted. So I measured out the length I needed for my waist (102" in my case), and then cut along the fold line which gave me two pieces that were 102" long and 27" wide.  I repeated that one more time for the cream layers, and once for the espresso layers, giving me a total of six layers of 102" x 27" tulle.

2. Lining fabric. 2 yards of off-white.

3. 4" satin ribbon for waistband. 1 yard.

4. A zipper in a similar shade as your lining fabric/inner layers of tulle.

5. Sewing machine. This could be done by hand, but would be really tedious.

Steps: 

1. Hand pleat each layer of tulle individually and secure the pleats with pins.  My pleats were approximately two inches wide with a .5 to an inch in between each pleat.  The pleating should look something like this, and does not need to be exact:

*Note - pleating each layer individually will result in a very full skirt (like mine). If you'd like yours to look more like the Anthro version, I'd suggest laying all the layers on top of one another and pleating all together.

2. Sew a straight stitch right above where you have pinned the pleats. You'll want to allow at least half an inch of tulle above the pins as you'll be sewing two separate stitches. The first - the straight stitch - will look like this:

3. Sew a basting stitch above the straight stitch.  To create a basting stitch, you will simply lengthen the stitch length on your machine to it's max allowable, and you will leave both of the ends of your stitch loose.  You will use the ends later to gather your tulle.  Once you've sewn your basting stitch, your tulle layer will look something like this:

4. Once all your layers have been pleated and each has a straight and basting stitch, you will want to gather each layer a bit more  so that it is just slightly longer (1" more)  than the the width of your waist. You will gather them by holding the bobbin (bottom) thread of your top basting stitch in one hand, and pulling the tulle down the length of the thread.  This preserves the pretty pleating detail, but makes the layers the correct length to go around your waist.

Then, you will sew each layer onto a piece of scrap fabric (I used some of the excess liner fabric) that is the same length as your waist measurement, and is approximately 3" wide. Start with your bottom layers and sew what will be the innermost layer (closest to your legs) to the bottom of the fabric scrap, then work your way up to the top layers. The tulle should stick out about half an inch (should be half an inch longer) on each end of the scrap piece.

5. Make the %$@&*! liner. Unfortunately, I have no pictures of this step because by this point I had ceased thinking this was a "fun" project and had resorted to swearing at the dog and throwing things.  However, I used these two videos which explain the process far better than I ever could.  It really isn't difficult, it just requires a little patience.

Once your circle skirt liner is sewn, it will look something like this: 

6. Take a length of satin ribbon slightly longer than your tulle layers, and fold in half lengthwise and press with an iron.  Insert your layers of tulle (which have been sewn to the scrap fabric) between the folded ribbon, pin, and sew with a straight stitch to hide the scrap fabric and the tulle stitching.  Then, sew to the waistband of your liner, leaving about an inch of the tulle and satin free in back in either side of the liner zipper.  At this point, it will look like this: 

*Note - I didn't have ribbon at this point, so I had to use a strip of satin with unfinished edges that unraveled like crazy. Definitely use ribbon instead! I also sewed my zipper on backwards. At 2:00 a.m., I decided this was not a mistake worth fixing. 

7.  In the back of the skirt, you will have slightly overlapping, loose ends of satin and tulle.  Sew on a hook and bar closure to the ends so that they overlap so the liner doesn't show, and so the tulle makes a full circle. 

And voila! Pretty much done. And in the proverbial and very season-appropriate words of Chevy Chase ...

.... "Hallelujah! Holy shit! Where's the Tylenol?" ... 

If you had ribbon on hand and the waist did not look as messy as mine, you would be able to wear the skirt as is at this point.  Mine was obviously not as neat as I would have liked, so I simply wore I wide belt from Kohl's that I already owned over the waistband.  Also, at 27", the skirt was longer than I would have liked. I trimmed after it was assembled, but would highly suggest figuring out your length and trimming the tulle before you start sewing. On my skirt, the top espresso layers were cut slightly shorter than the cream layers underneath. 

THE END. I hope this has been at least marginally helpful, and would love to know how it goes for you if you give this skirt a shot. Happy sewing!

Linking up with The Pleated Poppy and Because Shanna Said So.