I had put the peppermint swirl dress on hold whilst making her lion costume; now that Halloween costumes are all sorted, I wanted to try assembling this thing. It seems quite intimidating – fourteen different slices in the skirt, all curves. And the strips look too long. I know the instructions said the whole thing would look off until you attached the first and last slices to make a whole circle … but holding a single strip up against my tiny person, I thought this might be an adult-sized skirt. In fact, I think you could use one of the larger child size patterns to make a short adult skirt. There’s a lot of gathering to the bodice, and her size 6 fit around my waist.
I used Moda Marbles in vanilla and indigo. No matter how silly it sounds, I was quite paranoid about attaching the strips in the wrong order. And I’m only working with two colours! But someone else who makes these dresses posted her technique — stacking the fabric in the order it would be used, then just pulling the next piece of fabric off the pile as she assembles the skirt. Perfect! I could double-check the order — asked Anya to tell me the colours, and listed for the alternation.
Anyway, assembly looks intimidating. You’ve cut twenty-eight segments and attached them together into fourteen individual strips. That’s a big pile of fabric. The whole thing came together quickly – like thinking I must have done something wrong quickly. This is certainly a serger project – it’s a lot of seams, and I would be devastated to spend this much time cutting and assembling a project (and five yards of fabric, even cheap fabric, adds up) only to have seams fray after a few uses. With a serger, though, I was able to assemble the entire thing in a couple of hours . The arc of each slices can be held straight for the ~2 inches between the front of my serger and its needles. I quickly developed a technique of sewing slowly and aligning the two fabric pieces at the front of the serger.
![](https://lisa.rushworth.us/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/IMG_20171029_165915-768x1024.jpg)
It does look odd (and huge) as the pieces come together.
![](https://lisa.rushworth.us/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/IMG_20171029_161455-1024x768.jpg)
I still need to hem the bottom and attach some snaps, but I needed to check the size one last time. Anya is so thrilled with the dress, she wanted to keep wearing it.
![](https://lisa.rushworth.us/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/DSC_1671-680x1024.jpg)
And make sure it spun well.
![](https://lisa.rushworth.us/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/DSC_1682-680x1024.jpg)
And make sure it danced well.
![](https://lisa.rushworth.us/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/DSC_1685-806x1024.jpg)
She says it works 🙂
I need to fix the top-stitching along the neckline. The thread pulled funny in a few places, and I mis-judged the center V. Final step will be to hem the bottom – I’m thinking of a rolled hem to keep it light-weight and “spinny”.