rea mills here today i'm going to show you how to sew a peasant skirt without using a pattern this is super simple and you can do it for any size and i'm going to show you the basic principles of how it works and then we'll sew one together first thing that we need to do is we need to take some measurements and we need to measure the waist how far around and we want to measure where the skirt's going to sit when you um put it on so wherever you naturally like your waistband to be just measure that area that circumference and then we're going to measure how long you want the skirt so from that waist point down to how long you want the finished skirt we need those two measurements and i measured eden for her skirt and we needed her waist was 27 inches and i can't remember the length right now so anyways we'll just say it was 30 inches i don't know what it was i'll have to go look at my measurements but this will we can still work from here so then we need to decide how many tiers or layers we want on our skirts so i'm gonna make this one a three layer skirt but you could do two or four or however many you want and i'm gonna make mine all the same height but you could do them differently if you wanted to so if i want a 30 inch skirt i need each one of these to be 10 inches tall when we're all done then i need my first layer to be one and a half times the width of my waist so i'm just going to round her waist to 30 inches so let's say we'll put this one at 45 inches no matter how many layers you do each layer needs to be one and a half times the length of the previous layer so the more layers you have or the more tiers you have the shorter each one is going to be but the longer each one is going to be so it actually is going to take a lot more fabric to make more tears even though your overall skirt size is going to be the same so if you want to use less fabric make less make fewer tiers but in this case so if we start our first one at 45 inches then we need to add about 20 to 25 inches for the second one so we'll say we'll make the next one 70 inches and then we need the third one to be another one and a half times that so that would be 105 inches long for this last tier then what's going to happen is we're going to gather each tier to fit the bottom of the tier above it so that we'll have a nice little roughly gathered skirt all the way down we're also going to need to have enough fabric at the bottom to make a hem so we're going to when we sew the bottom hem we're going to fold up a half inch and then another inch and we'll be sewing along that edge i'm just obviously showing you here on paper but we need to make sure that we account for that extra fabric for the hem and then at the top of the skirt we're going to need the same thing for putting elastic in we'll call this our casing at the top and so we'll need the same extra fabric around the top so that we can slip our elastic in there that means our top tier is going to need an additional one and a half inches at the top so that we can have that extra folding fabric then we're also going to need that extra one and a half inches down here at the bottom like that and then we're gonna need to be able to sew these together so we're gonna add an extra half inch to these sides like so that's going to be the case no matter how many tiers you do the top tier is going to need that extra one and a half inches for the casing and then a half inch for the seam allowance at the bottom then the bottom tier is going to need the extra one and a half inches for the hem and a half inch for the seam allowance and then any middle tiers or just need another extra half inch at top and bottom for the seam allowance no matter how many extra how many middle tiers that you have so overall that just means you're going to be adding two extra inches to the top tier two extra inches to the bottom tier and one extra inch to each middle tier that means my top tier is going to be 12 and a half inches times 45 inches my middle tier is going to be 11 inches by 70 inches and my bottom tier is going to be i'm sorry just 12 inches yes 12 inches by 105 inches i could make this easy on myself and just cut each tier at 12 inches and that middle one will just be an inch wider than the other two which um would actually be just fine and it won't make that big of a difference on the length so i might do that so there's not this is not exact so when you're measuring your own you're just kind of roughing it also there's no fabric that i can get that's that wide in fact this is the widest one that i can just cut a single piece from a piece of fabric so that means i'm going to cut a couple of strips and sew them together to get these longer lengths okay so it turns out that i only need to have 10 inch after i check my measurements so i'm going to cut a bunch of 10 inch strips here [Laughter] okay so about five um your sins are forgiven strips now we'll use one for the top tier because that's going to be about 45 inches long then i'll sew these two together and cut off um about 20 inches from that and that'll be our second tier so i'll take the 20 inches i cut up from here and then sew it on to the strip that i make out of these two pieces which will put me at about 110 inches for those two okay so here's our gonna be our top tier that's just a single piece of fabric i trimmed one of these down to the right length now for the second tier and i added that extra piece over to this pile for the third tier so we'll sew these together with the um right sides inside and we'll sew along here so we'll sew these two ends together for this middle tier and then pull the other end over to that end to make a big band and then do the same thing with the three pieces for the bottom tier do just like my drawing now i've got three bands of fabric that are sewn together into big um loops so here's my top tier my middle tier is about one and a half times longer and then my bottom tier is about one and a half times longer than the middle tier so the next thing i'm going to do is go use the iron to press up the hem so i'm going to go a half inch and then about an inch up all the way around on this bottom tier and then i'm going to do the top tier the same thing going a half inch and then an inch down to make the casing for the elastic at the waist okay so this is what it looks like now we got this little piece folded down and ironed and then this and then we'll be able to stitch right along here okay so now we can see that i got the hem pressed up the elastic casing pressed down now i'm going to go ahead and i'm going to stitch along the edge here and i'm going to stay pretty close to this edge and at some point i'm going to leave a gap about that wide so that i have some place to open or to insert my elastic so i'm going to sew all the way around and then if i started here i'm going to go all the way around and then i'm going to stop about here so that i can put that elastic in and then i'll stitch up that last little bit when i'm done then for the hem i'm going to stitch all the way around staying pretty close to that edge when i was doing the ironing i also pressed all of my seams nice and flat then i'm going to do a gather stitch along the top of this middle tier and the top of this bottom tier so it just means i'm going to make a really long stitch as long as my sewing machine can make and i'm not going to backstitch so that i can pull on my bobbin thread so what i'm going to do is i'm going to stitch all the way around on this these two on the top edge and then we'll gather those up so i'll show you that as we go okay they're all sewed i left my little gap here for the elastic casing right at the seam so that it would have like a spot where it makes sense to her for this to be the back of her skirt when she puts it on so that's going to be the very back then i've done my gathering stitch on the top of the middle tier and on the top of the bottom tier and i've sewed up the hem on the bottom the next step is to start gathering up this edge here and pinning it to the bottom of the top tier i am going to try not to line up my seams since they're not going to be like equal distance apart i want to try to stagger them around instead of having some of them lined up in some of the knot so what i'm going to do is i'm going to start with two ends just find like an end here and pin it to that then pin another end like this then i'll start pulling on my bobbin thread like that to gather it up and get it all nicely gathered and pinned to this top piece [Applause] [Applause] okay so everything is gathered up from that middle tier and pinned to the top tier so then i'm going to sew around the top about a half inch from the edge and then i'm also going to zigzag all the way around since these are raw edges [Laughter] so i've um sewed the two pieces together and zigzagged around so this is what it's looking like so then i'm gonna um go ahead and gather this one up and sew it to the bottom of the middle tier so the last tier is on now so what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna go ahead and iron this all nicely then the last step will be to add the elastic to the waistband i've cut a piece of quarter inch elastic but you can use any size that feels comfortable to you and you want to make it several inches at least shorter than the um waist measurement so that when you have it on it has to stretch a little that'll hold it tight if you make it the same size then it'll just slip right off so what i usually do is i put the elastic in and then i try it on or have whoever i'm making for try it on before i actually sew the two ends together to make sure that it's tight enough so that i can make adjustments and then finish it i put a safety pin in the end here so i can use that to fish the elastic through the casing i'm gonna find my little opening that i left and put the elastic up in there and then just feed it through with that safety pin i don't want to accidentally make the whole piece go in so i'm going to just take this end and pin it here so that it can't be pulled all the way in okay we're back to the beginning and we'll come back out of the hole there then i'm going to just use a needle and thread to sew these two ends together and i already have this color thread in here and it doesn't matter because we won't see it so i just i'm using what was already in my needle okay so those are all stitched together now our last step is to stitch close that little gap that we left here so there we have our finished peasant skirt now when you make your own like i said you could do different amounts of tears if you have lots of shorter tiers you're going to get a way fuller skirt that's going to spin really nicely so if you want a skirt that really spins out nice when you're um dancing especially when you're a little girl and you like that then you could do a bunch of short tiers because each one would get fuller and fuller you could also do um fuller fabric here dude like twice instead of doing one and a half times the length you could do twice the length on each one and then you'd end up with a longer or a fuller skirt also but this is the basic method you can do different colors for the different tiers and make it your own many of you have asked what pattern i use for sofia's dress and this is the pattern here so i'm going to show it to you i'm not going to show you how to make it but it's the same sort of a skirt just with the peasant top attached but i altered it by adding a third tier here at the bottom to make it longer so this is a simplicity c 2019 you