"The Mermaid Stroll"
We have been hanging on to this fabric for a few weeks. Originally purchased in a blush pink color with the vague idea of curtains for Stella's room, we soon added this lovely lavender color to our stash, and then moved on to other projects while it languished in the corner of the studio, looking so achingly beautiful...
And then I saw this on Pinterest. So simple and so beautiful. It was perfect!
Stella thinks it looks like a mermaid skirt, and we agree. So we strolled on the beach, and she wore her fluttery mermaid attire. And carried a sparkly wand.
The most wonderful thing about this project, is that this is basically fancy t-shirt fabric! A jersey knit base, with semi-sheer stretch tulle ruffles cascading down. The ruflles are not separate pieces sewn on to a background, they are knit right on. It is a marvel!
The result of the self-ruffling on knit is a soft, drapey, luxurious feeling, and a fabric that needs very little sewing to produce a finished garment. No hemming! Genius, I say!
If you follow the tutorial from the link above, you will see that Stella's skirt is different in that her ruffles run horizontally in the front and cascade to vertical in the back. The adult skirt is the opposite. In an adult size, there is not enough width on the fabric to run this way. She began with a 2-yard piece of fabric, and I only used about 3/4 yard to make essentially a size 3T.
You only need two measurements to make this. A waist measurement and your desired skirt length. There is only one seam in this garment, plus a zig-zag stitch to attach elastic to the waistband! It honestly took me less than an hour start to finish.
I had a few rows of ruffles left from my 3/4 yard piece, so I made a simple rose, to further embellish the skirt or to wear as a hairclip or pin.
I cut a 2-1/4" circle of felt, and trimmed the ruffle very close on both sides of the knit, where it attaches to the base of the fabric. Using a hot glue gun, I just circled around and around, using glue as needed to keep it firmly in place on the felt. To finish, I added a hairclip and a brooch pin to the back, and some old pearls on wire that I had in my giant jar of odds and ends.
This is probably the easiest fabric flower I have ever made!
I wanted to show the flower used as a hairclip, but this particular mermaid on this particular morning was not really feeling it.
Mermaids are moody like that.
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Tank top ~ Baby Gap
Ruffled Fabric ~ A Gilded Life
Tulle Wand ~ here. (I still owe everyone a tutorial for these. sigh)
Scenery ~ The Montage, Laguna Beach
