Finished Tie Dye Picnic Skirt

Hi friends. Here is the finished product from my adventures in tie dye: A Picnic Blanket skirt made using this excellent tutorial from Tilly.

I really enjoyed making this skirt, the tutorial instructions were super clear and easy to follow, and the skirt itself is pretty simple to make, very satisfying for a beginner like me.
I used my tie dyed fabric for the body of the skirt and some more of that cheapy white 'cotton' for the waistband. Originally I wanted to use bright turquoise buttons, but as the grey colour turned out so pale I went with some cute baby blue buttons instead.

Because the material is a little bit too see through I decided to make a slip for this skirt.I used this fab post from Tasia and whipped one up in just under 2 hours.

Almost exactly as this picture was taken someone came out of our building (the pictures were taken in our block car park) pretty embarrassing but hilarious too. 

I made the slip out of the same fabric as the skirt (minus the dye) and added a pretty grey lace trim which you can see better in this picture:

I love this slip, it's so fun to be wearing a cheeky bit of lace under a fairly everyday outfit. I'll definitely be making more of these to go under other skirts! 

So.. what did I learn whilst making these garments?

Lessons Learnt on The Tie Dye Picnic Skirt:

1. I need more practice and patience when it comes to sewing on top of gathers: on both this skirt and my crescent skirt, I struggled with getting the waistbands sewn straight, what with all the gathers I had to sew through, the waistband on this skirt is a little wonky as a result but a little practice should fix it for next time.

2.How to make buttonholes: I love the buttonhole foot on my machine, it's so clever. It took me quite a few practice goes (and a little swearing, I can't lie)  to work it all out but it was so worth it. Hurray for buttonholes!

3.Polyester hates dye: ok, so I kind of knew this already but not to what extent, although I do love how they fabric turned out, I was pretty surprised at just how much the colour didn't take to the fabric.

4. Dye garments after you've sewn it up: I cut out my three skirt pieces first and then tied each one separately, this means the stripes don't really match up at the front, never mind, I know for next time!

I can see more of these skirts in my future, they are so easy to make and so cute. Thank you so much to Tilly for sharing this excellent skirt pattern, and for free, so very generous!

Alice x