Baby Skirts
November 12th, 2011 | Link
Speaking of things that go well with onesies and stress-induced ADD requiring mindless handwork, more baby items were in order for this particular friend. It seems like it’s easier to find somewhat hip baby stuff these days — beyond the pink and blue and media-branded items — but who wants to pay $20 for something that baby is going to outgrow in a few months? So I used this übersimple gathered skirt pattern to throw together a couple of skirts to pull on over the onesies.
The bicycle skirt is a nod to the daddy-to-be:
The leaves are something that the mommy-to-be would probably wear herself:
The fabrics are Michael Miller Citron Gray Bicycles and Nature Walk Organic Leaves Crimson, both purchased from Fabric.com. I ordered half a yard of each fabric and made the 12-18 month size. For the smallest size, you could get two skirts out of a half-yard — I had plenty of fabric left over. For the bicycle skirt I used the full width of the fabric (44″, less selvedges), but I felt it was a little too full, so for the leaf skirt I cut about 6 inches off the width.
(I also grooved on this tiered gathered skirt for babies, but lacked an infant for measuring and didn’t have enough coordinating fabrics around to pull it off.)
I can’t say I ever feel I “lack” an infant; more like “am blessed by the calm surroundings of not having an infant” but to each their own. 😉
These are great little skirts. What a practical gift idea!
Seems like they could be pretty quickly converted to flat little pillows when outgrown, too. I remember being very fond of having small stuffed-animal-size pillows to use for their beds when playing house.
Dinah — I only really desired one long enough to measure it, as I’m completely oblivious to proportions of kids of that age (or any age really). Though I suspect there’s a lot of variety 🙂
You’re right, they would be totally easy to upcycle, as each skirt is basically a long rectangle. Take out the elastic and you could make pillows, quilts, doll dresses, whatever. One could probably even add a ruffle to the bottom and replace the elastic with a longer piece, and get a skirt that would last another year or so.
These are great ideas! Do I get to send them back to you every two years for upcycling? 🙂
For that you’d have to upgrade to the unlimited license 🙂