Mermaid Sparkle Tutu

Mermaid Sparkle TutuI made this sweet sparkly skirt as a Christmas present for Sammi.  I had been trying to figure out what to get for her when we found ourselves at a Sam Roberts concert.  The opening band was all ’90s altrock mashed in to one and too loud, but Sammi really liked the keys player’s outfit.  Specifically her top, which was a lose black shift (I think that’s what you’d call it) with rainbow sequins.

As I plugged my ears (still hearing the music perfectly clearly) I thought of how a similar shirt would probably be easy to make and totally possible before Christmas.

The inspiration.The next week I set out to fabricland with mom to scout out fabric options.  There wasn’t really fabric like what I was looking for, although there was a nice pink/pale rainbow one that I thought might do.  There was, however (yes biology students, this is when you use “however”, not just randomly when you want to sound ‘smart’), a sparkly mesh that caught my eye.  We didn’t buy anything that day, but the crinoline crazy stuff stayed in my brain.  I went back in a festive mania and bought the sequins, two colours of sparkle crinoline and a generic crinoline (in case I needed more volume).  Everyone else was festive at the store too and many people asked me about my project, and were shocked (ish) that I had no real plan.

 

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I consulted some online tutorials and made a mental plan.  Tonnes of sparkles came off of the crazy fabric. The cats couldn’t stop themselves from helping at all stages.  I started with about 3m of the aqua, folding it over and basting.  Then I made wide square pleats in it and sewed again.  I then sectioned the 1m of blue-green and sewed it in to one long hoop and added

that to the aqua loop.Mess'o'sparkles01Jan09 12901Jan09 119kitten getting in to things/another helper01Jan09 12701Jan09 125

I figured out the basic size of the waistband to get over some hips and made it out of some scrap that as Testing the waistbandliterally lying around.  It turned out to be pretty much the perfect colour. I gathered and sewed, then inserted some elastic.  I put that badboy on the judy and pulled up sections, sewing them in place by hand.  this provided a good amount of volume for the skirt.

 

It all turned out pretty cool.  There was plenty of fabric that I didn’t even touch, which I gave with the present.  There will be another sparkle project…Grey, admiring the skirt from beneath

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The final product. Yay!!