Girls Skirt

All you need for this craft is two bandannas, a long section of scrap material that you can use for the waist band (I used a dollar store t-shirt material scarf), and a little bit of elastic for the waist.

This skirt is a bit different to the usual bandanna skirt. The first steps you’ll look at and wonder where on earth we’re going with it, but trust me, it works out and it’s really rather nifty! Incidentally, there are a nice range of bandannas at the dollar tree, so this is a super cheap project!

So, lay out your first bandanna and give it an ironing. Then get a small circular plate or dish (the one I’m using has a diameter of about five inches) and put it right in the center of the bandanna. The bandannas I’m using are cotton ones from Joanne’s and the pattern is really easy to eyeball the middle with on them. Draw around the bowl to mark a circle. You need to do this for both bandannas.

Next cut out those circles from the center, and also cut one straight line from the center of one of the sides up to meet the circular hole you just made on each bandanna. Save these circles that you cut out of the middle if they have a nice pattern on like the ones I have here.

You can use them to appliqué onto a matching t-shirt!

OK, you have all your cutting done for the bandannas now. Next you need to place them one on top of each other with their right sides facing together. Pin one side of the straight cut that you made and sew that up. I’m doing all hand sewing here, but if you’re machine sewing then this whole project will be super quick!

This part is where what we have been doing will start to make sense! Open up your two bandannas that are now joined along one seam and spread them out. You can see that the two circular holes that you cut have been joined to create one larger one with twice the circumference of those smaller ones! Cool huh! You have the beginnings of a nice twirly eight pointed skirt!

Now you need to make the waist band for it. For this I used a black t-shirt material dollar store scarf, but if you have some old t-shirts handy you can always cut off the bottom five inches or so to use for this (that would actually make this project even faster, because the bottom of the t-shirt hem can have elastic threaded directly into it) working with right sides together again, pin and sew the length of waist band material all around the large circular hole you have made in the bandannas.

When you open this up you can see how nicely fluted the skirt will be. Trim off the excess waistband material. It’s best to overestimate how much you’re going to need in length, but to estimate, it’s going to need to be roughly 2πd in length (where d is the diameter of the bowl that you used to cut the small circular holes in each bandanna).

The other measurement you need to think about for a moment is the width of the waist band. Mine was about five inches, so the waist band would be about four inches deep when it has the elastic sewn in, this added to the length of the hem you sewed between the two bandannas will give you the shortest length of the skirt (between the pointed edges). If you’re using a small bandanna like those from the Dollar Tree then you’ll want to make a slightly wider waist band, so that no one’s underwear is showing when they wear it, although the shorter ones I’ve made look rather cute over the top of a pair of jeans!

Last thing before you sew in the elastic is to fold the skirt over right sides together and hem up that last side that runs from the bottom of the bandanna right up to the top of the waist band.

Fold over the waist band and hem it all up, leaving a gap to thread in the elastic.

Finally, pop your elastic into the waist band using a safety pin to thread it through, sew together the two ends of the elastic at the required size for your mini pirate’s midriff and then sew closed the little hole that you threaded it all in through.