Scrappy Floral Skirt Tutorial

In case you missed this post last month on Living With Punks, here's the project I made for her Scrap Your Stash series. (I just typed "srap" instead of "scrap" and honestly stared at it for like 4 minutes trying to figure out why I was getting the red squiggle misspelling line on it . . . I must have left my brain somewhere along I-80. I think I recall it making a run for the hills somewhere in Wyoming.)

 I've had my eye on this Anthropologie lampshade for a while now, and immediately thought of it as the perfect scrapbusting inspiration:

 

no longer available online; image from my Pinterest page

I loved the unusual floral design and mix of pattern and color, but my real crafty love is clothing. I wanted to incorporate this idea into something wearable, so I used their fun floral pattern to create a cute scrappy skirt!

 Believe me, folks, this project was a true scrapbuster from start to finish--even the skirt itself was in my scrap pile! I don't know if this is common practice everywhere, but at the Salvation Army in my town, you get to pick an item off a rack by the register to take home free for every $10 you spend (which means I end up with a lot of those freebies)--I chose this skirt a few shopping trips ago with the intent of chopping it up to use the linen fabric for something else. But now it has a new life in my closet as a beautiful skirt full of happy, scrappy memories!

 

I love the look of this skirt, but even more, I love that when I wear it, I'm carrying with me little reminders of sewing for the people I love--fabric scraps from a wedding quilt for a dear friend, a pillow given to a neighbor, and even a few pieces left over from my first sewing project ever contributed to this skirt.

Click "read more" to learn how to make your own!

 

 You'll need . . . 

- a skirt (you could sew it yourself, or use a neglected one from your closet that needs a little love--I used this thrift store score and just picked off the big funky beads)

- various fabric scraps (get creative and find pieces that really mean something to you!)

- fusible interfacing

 - floral pattern (my sister is amazing with a capital A, and used the lamp photo above as a guide to create a pattern for me! You can download it HERE! Thanks, Bekah!)

Start by attaching the fusible interfacing to the wrong side of your fabric scraps, following the directions on the package (if you've never used fusible interfacing before, don't be scared! All you have to do is iron!).

Print out the floral pattern (available HERE) and cut out the pieces. I labeled the rows of petals so I could reconstruct the flower more easily--just write a 1 in the center piece, 2 in the petals in the next row, and so on.

Using your pattern pieces, cut the petal shapes from your scraps and lay them out on your skirt. Don't worry about reconstructing the flower perfectly--that's what makes a project like this fun! Just arrange them however you like on the skirt, removing the paper backing from the interfacing and ironing the pieces onto the skirt as you go. I pinned each piece down after ironing, just to make sure I didn't lose any stragglers between the ironing board and the sewing machine.

Now it's time to stitch those suckers down! I chose to use a free motion/embroidery foot on my sewing machine for this project--you could certainly use a regular ol' foot, but I like the ease and freedom that an embroidery foot gives, especially when sewing something that would require a lot of turns. Instead of having to stop at each bump and corner, lift the foot, and rotate the skirt to change the direction of your stitch line, you can just zip around wherever you like and trace the shapes on the skirt. If you don't have an embroidery foot, no worries! Just sew as close as you can to the edge of your pattern pieces, stop when you get to a corner, make sure your needle is down in the fabric, lift the presser foot, and rotate the skirt to keep sewing. Sew each pattern piece down.

 

 And repeat until you have as many flowers as you'd like! I placed one large, main flower on the front of the skirt, another smaller one up near the hip, and a third one peeking up from the hem.

I'm so happy with how my skirt turned out, because I not only have an adorable new skirt to wear this summer, I salvaged dozens of meaningful fabric scraps that would have otherwise been tossed out.

Imma share this skirt at Tatertots and Jello, Whipperberry, Skip to my Lou, and The Girl Creative!