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Thursday, August 27, 2009

Circle Skirt Waist template

Anyway.. you know how to make circle skirts right? There are a ton of tutorials on the web.
One of my favorites for bellydance skirts and my all time favorite way to make circle skirts is out of tablecloths, no hemming that very long diameter! You can find Wipster's great tutorial here.
I'm not reinventing the wheel. Or any other form of circle. I made myself a template to make the circles for the waistband with though, like any other sewing, it's a guideline, and you will probably want to modify it some for your perfect fit, and it's at 2 inch increments, just remember if you're making a skirt with a zipper/finished waist band instead of an elastic waistband, take off more in *tiny* amounts. It doesn't take much to completely ruin it. A .25 inch increase in diameter can make a HUGE difference in the final waist band. Like if you use the 36 inch waistband and decide when you're fitting it's a bit snug, trimming off a 1/4 inch around the circle makes it a little over 37 inches. Do account for seam allowances, but by extending the edges, not by making a bigger circle.
Also, these are not exact. I rounded up, but not so high up I went up an inch in size, there is between a .4 and .6 inch difference between the stated sizes and what they actually are when you cut them, that's +.4 or +.6, not minus.
It's a quarter circle template, so you'll want to either place it on a fold, or use the template to make a newspaper pattern that's a whole or half circle.
If you are making one with an elastic waist, measure at the hips and cut that circle.
Earlier this summer, a craft mag had this brilliant idea of using round table cloths. I love the idea so much, because they are already hemmed. Of course,this only works if you want a length that can be accommodated by one of the standard sizes for round table cloths.
To figure length, it's the radius of the total circle- radius of the waist. Here's a quick run down of the radii that I used in inches. D for diameter, R for radius.
50- 16 D- 8 R
48- 15.5 D - 7.75 R
46- 14.8 D- 7.4 R
44- 14.2 D- 7.1 R
42 - 13.5 D- 6.75 R
40- 12.9 D- 6.45 R
38- 12.20 D- 6.1 R
36- 11.6 D- 5.8 R
34- 11 D- 5.5 R
So, a 70 inch diameter round table cloth would make a skirt 35 inches - R of waistband, which on me would be a nice longer skirt.
Okay.. :) Enough with that. It's in PDF format, set up for American paper sizes. I have it for A4 paper too, but it seems kind of silly to post that since I did all my figuring in inches and the places that use A4 paper are too sensible to use inches.
The template.

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