I had 1.0 yard of green dinosaur fabric, 0.5 yard of bones dinosaurs fabric, and about 1.25 yards of purple fabric. I made gathered ruffles, but it didn't turn out as ruffly as I had hoped. Now I'm second-guessing myself and thinking I should have tried to finagle circular ruffles. But I'm not sure I would have had enough fabric.
I made the purple top kind of like a collar, with two layers of fabric. The elastic got a pocket at the top edge. Then I pressed the lower edges 5/8 inch under, tucked the upper two ruffles plus lining to which lower ruffle is stitched inside the purple, and sewed everything together. I thought it would be a good way to make all the seams tidy. And it did make them tidy:
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| inside join of purple top to dino ruffles |
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| sideseam for top layer |
But all the layers had different circumferences, and it was slow, exasperating work to get them gathered to the same circumference and pinned together without little swags escaping from the seam line. Next time I need to make a ruffled skirt, I will leave the layers as strips, gather and pin and stitch all the layers together as a trapezoid, and only at the last stitch up a side seam to turn the trapezoid into a truncated cone (skirt).
But it has purple and ruffles and dinosaurs, and I think overall it's a success. I hope the person who commissioned it will like it!
