Concert circle skirts — Victoria Martinez

My friend Aiden approached me to make circle skirts for her bluegrass duo, Gil and Wil, for a very exciting show they had in November. (Supporting Wolf Willow in a recorded show at the historic Darke Hall) They had purchased shirts but wanted circle skirts to match!

Aiden and I did a shopping trip to figure out details - she and Holly were after simple circle skirts in colours as closely matched to each other’s shirts as possible, and she selected a bit of simple lace for an accent. I also got loads of bias tape to match, since I wanted the bias to be visible at the hem and also a good colour match (particularly for the red).

I cut both skirts from measurements, using a ruler and T-Square to mark the cut line (and make sure I had the right measurements perpendicular to each other). A while back I bought a box of Carmel tailor’s crayons and they were really great for this, quite visible but easy to erase with heat. Each skirt is two half-circle pieces and a straight waistband, very straightforward. They also preferred elastic waistbands so we went that way, using hip measurements +2” for the waist circle guide.

But they also have pockets and I endeavored to make them as nicely as possible. I messed up out the gate and copied the shape from another pattern which has too-small pockets so they aren’t as functional as I would have liked, but at least they can keep, like, guitar picks in them so it’s not nothing. My efforts to make the pockets nice: twill tape on the top side to reinforce and prevent bagging out, grading seams where they connect to the skirt, edge stitching, and obv french seams on the bags themselves.

One hiccup is they are longer than ideal, and this was because neither Gil nor Wil got around to measuring their crinolines nor coming for a fitting (my husband kindly wore both skirts to enable me to fix the hems after hanging!!), so I erred on the long side for both. They wound up hiking the skirts up for the show and rolling waistbands, tragic!!

My favourite bit is in fact the contrast bias binding on the inner hems. Basically invisible with the crinolines but I think a very clean detail and worth the time; a bias-tape finish is definitely my prefered one for a curve of this kind. Also, it sucked sewing them on the red skirt because my machine tension totally freaked out but I didn’t hear thunks so I wound up having to rip everyyyyyything out and re-do it.

Pattern: just a classic circle skirt, two half circles, with pockets
Size: drafted to measurements
Fabric and notions: cotton broadcloth, cotton thread, twill tape, elastic, lace