Poodle Skirt Tutorial for an 18 inch Doll

A few weeks ago Lu got up in front of her whole school to dance the Jitterbug with her whole class.  It was sooooo cute and I was so proud of her.  Lu and I made a poodle skirt for the performance (using Dana's basic circle skirt tutorial) with some purple knit fabric.  I didn't even bother to hem it because knits don't really fray (and it was a costume anyway).  

We had a little bit of fabric left over, and Lu begged for me to help her make a matching skirt for her doll. We threw the skirt together in less than an hour, and Lu couldn't be more thrilled. Are you ready to make your own doll skirt?  

Let me walk you through the steps:

First, here's what you'll need:

12 inches of 1 inch elastic

17 inch square of knit fabric (or fabric of your choice)

puffy fabric paint to make the poodle and "leash"

The template at the  bottom of this page.

Start by printing out the template on this page on 8.5 x 11 paper, nothing the inch guide to make sure that the template prints out the correct size. 

Fold your fabric into quarters, which should fit the template pretty exactly.

Cut out your circle skirt using the template.

When you are finished cutting, your skirt should look like this:

Next, fold the piece of elastic in half and sew a 3/8th inch seam.

It should look like this when you are finished sewing. Fold down each the edges and sew through the top of the band, securing each side in place.

The "nice" side should look like this when you are done:

and the reverse side should look like this:

The opening of the skirt should be roughly the size of your elastic.

Pin the elastic to the skirt.

I usually start at opposite ends, adding pins in between.

You'll end up with something like this.  Note the puckers in the skirt fabric.  That's because you'll need to pull your elastic as you sew to match up with the skirt fabric.

Go ahead and stitch along the bottom of the elastic, pulling it as needed.

Tada!  Your skirt is complete.  All you need to do is embellish!

I just used puffy fabric paint to freehand on a poodle:

I'm excited about how it turned out, and I'm really glad that I decided to just draw on the poodle.  It saved so much work!  It really was a perfect mother/daughter project!  We both had a great time!

I never really thought of circle skirts as an easy project, but they really are!  The project was fast enough that she didn't really lose interest until I started drawing on the puppy, which was probably actually a good thing. 

 I've been promising her that we'd make her doll clothes for a while now, so I felt good about finally carrying through on my promise.  I think it will be fun to make different variations of this skirt, and I'm hoping that as Lu gets a little older it might be a skirt that she might be able to make all by herself.  I have very fond memories of sewing with my grandmother, and I hope that Lu looks back on these sewing times fondly too.  

What do you think?  Do you like the way it turned out?

One final thing:  This template is meant for your personal use only.  Use it to make gifts, etc, but please don't sell skirts made with this template.  Thanks!