Making a ruffly [cupcake shaped] petticoat + skirt

Circle skirt tutorial — Ruffle/Gathering Tutorial & Info

^important stuff

[almost] finished project!

-This will not work with very flimsy materials (such as chiffon, jersey, costume satin etc.) you need fabric with at least some natural stiffness

-These get pretty heavy so they should be made with a fitted waistband and a zipper + snap closure. Elastics will fall down on you D:

-This requires making at least 25 yards or ruffles, which means over 150 yards of hemming so…uh…set some time aside for making this.

-If you have a question about this, I’d be happy to answer, but for the love of god don’t ask it on anon.

Keep in mind that circle skirts have really long hems, and when laid flat are, quite literally, a circle. This will probably equate to being more work and volume then you want.

For this I ended up cutting a half circle skirt, three inches shorter then I wanted my finished petti/skirt to be. This is a BASE, it will not be seen, and should be made from a somewhat sturdy material that will not stretch or tear.

I cut strips of a heavy tulle netting (the scratchy awful type, not the pretty flimsy stuff used on princess skirts) until I had ten four inch by one yd strips. These get sewn together until I have one long strip, then ruffles get sewn onto the bottom.

The strip gets folded in half (wrong sides together) and sewn across the seam where the ruffles were attached.

Then the tulle gets gathered down to the size of my skirt hem and sewn into place. It will look like this.

Then repeat but with longer tulle! This time I used eight inch strips which were obviously sewn four inches above my four inch layer.

Now you have a lovely A-line petticoat that just needs a zipper…but that’s not what we’re making here. We want a cupcake shaped petti!

So that requires one more layer that starts from your waist. Measure from the waist of your skirt to where the tulle ends and add a seam allowance for ruffles. For the length, multiply your waist measurement by four.

Add the ruffle, and then sew something over the seam to hide fraying. In this case I used really cheap lace.

Then gather that down and sew it into place.

Now the ruffles should lay somewhat evenly but they are kind of all over the place.

you can fix that by taking a very large needle and sewing through all the layers of tulle until they are compacted down a bit

And then you *can* sew a hoop into the petti so it will never deflate! All that really requires is hand sewing hooping wire on which isn’t very complicated at all.