Every year, I often have grand sewing plans to coincide with various holidays. Always starting with good intentions, I keep a notebook to record my idea of the perfect skirt for Easter, to launch into Spring, or to commemorate Halloween. But, because of the craziness of life, it rarely ever happens that way. True to form, my annual Christmas skirt is about a month behind schedule. Well, you know what they say about making plans…
As the holidays bustled ever closer towards the end of 2021, I started to think through options for the perfect Christmas skirt. I had so many ideas, but wanted to tackle something moderately ambitious, but not too insane for lack of time (I see you light-up winter wonderland skirt). This holiday season, my in-laws were coming for Christmas and trees needed to be trimmed, halls needed to be decked. I also wanted something not so obviously tied to Christmas, so I could potentially rock around things other than a Christmas tree…
The Design
Awhile back, I had seen a crochet pattern for a Christmas tree skirt. Done in shades of white, red, and black, the stock photo showed a line of music notes and a set of bells jiggling merrily at the front. As often happens when I see a Christmas tree skirt, I thought to myself, “That would make an amazing human skirt….”
I mean…why should a Christmas tree have all the fun? And my 2021 Christmas skirt idea was officially born!
I decided to emulate that Christmas tree skirt, but make it out of felt instead of crochet. My plan was to create a musical stave out of strips of felt, and cut out music notes around the hem to play a Christmas song (specific song to be determined), and top it off with some silver bells.
Although I love color around the holidays, I also thought it would be a nice departure for me to stick exclusively to shades of black, white, and red (with a dash of glitter…)
First stop on this Christmas train: pick and gather the materials. When I work with a lighter color base for a circle skirt, I’ve found I prefer a 100% wool felt rather than a wool blend. Although more expensive than a blend, it tends to be a bit thicker and less likely to flash my knickers to a roomful of co-eds (nobody wants to be that professor).
I turned to my go-to, The Felt Store, and scoops up 4 yards of their 100% wool felt in natural (which I’ve found from past projects to be a lovely winter white). I also had some of their wool felt in black leftover from a previous project, which I would use for the music notes and stave.
For the applique, I turned to BBD Supplies – I am completely in love with their wool blend felt, both for the quality and bevy of color options. Plus, they have GLITTER FELT. Hello my homeland. I quickly perused their site and scooped up 12 x 9 sheets of wool blend felt in bright red and silver glitter.
Lastly, I gathered a few additional bits and bobs that I would use to add a bit of surprise detail – namely some mini bells for a bit of extra Christmas spirit and some grosgrain ribbon, which I planned to add to my waistband.
And just like that, we were ready to start making beautiful music together.
To recreate this skirt, you will need:
The Construction
With the felt in hand, I drafted a circle skirt to my waist circumference (4.5″ radius = 28″ finished waist) and a hem length of 29″ (30.5″ + 4.5″ = 35″ outer radius, including a 0.5″ waist seam allowance). Because I hate side zips, I always cut out one half circle and two quarter circles out of my felt.
One of the benefits of using felt is that no hemming his required (got to love fabric with no fray!). So you can make the length of your skirt to your desired length (minus the waist seam allowance)
Then, I stitched each set up at the side seams and up the back seam, leaving a 9″ gap for the inevitable zipper (which would go in towards the end of the project). If you aren’t as familiar with the geometry behind making a circle skirt, check out this post for a more detailed walk through. I ended up with one perfect circle skirt out of the white felt, which would serve as my base.
Following the original inspiration, I wanted a musical stave that would circle around the entire hem. To keep everything symmetrical, it would just take a bit of measuring. Starting 8″ up from the hem, I made marks with my disappearing ink pen, keeping them spaced 1.5″ apart. I did this around the entire hem – making marks every foot or so.
To create the stave, I cut a series of 1/4″ strips of black felt. If you have a cutting mat and a rotary cutter, you’ll zip through this step in about 10 seconds flat. I recommend running the rotary cutter along a ruler to keep your lines super straight.
Once I had enough of the felt strips, I laid them along my marks, curving around the entire skirt. I started from the bottom and worked my way up, until I had 5 concentric circles of felt. Because the felt strips weren’t long enough to go the full way around, I just overlapped the pieces to make it look continuous.
Then, I cut a gap at the front right and added a perpendicular strip of felt, to demarcate the start of the music.
After a quick check to make sure the lines were all evenly spaced apart, I pinned them in place (you will use a lot of pins here – but this is definitely an instance where more pins are better – you really don’t want those felt strips moving around.
Before you go any further, I highly recommend securing the musical stave to the skirt. Our brains are naturally drawn to errors, and if the lines move or wiggle or become even a little off, the eye will be drawn to it immediately. While you can hand stitch them, I’ve found the best method is to machine stitch – it’s quicker, and will look neater.
Starting with the outermost strip of felt, I slowly stitched the felt strips in place, going slowly and taking care to keep the strips aligned with my marks. I repeated this for each row, until I had a (reasonably) parallel stave. Then, I stitched down the perpendicular strip at the end, trimming the excess so it looked neat and tidy.
With the stave in place, it was time to make some music! I was going to take a few artistic liberties here, but wanted to stay as true as I could to proper sheet music. If you’ve ever seen sheet music before, you will know that it starts with a treble clef, which indicates which pitch should be played when reading and writing music.
To cut out this most critical of musical elements, I turned to my trusted Cricut Maker. After finding the shape in Design Space (#MA358804), I cut the clef out of the 100% wool felt.
So, with my hands poised above the keys, what song could I possibly play around this skirt? Believe it or not, this decision actually took some thinking. I wanted notes that would give me some visual interest, but not be so complicated that my Cricut would collapse in a felt-cutting heap. I scrolled through 100’s of my favorite Christmas Songs, trying to find the right one.
In the end, the answer was obvious (isn’t it always straightforward in hindsight?). I had to go with the ultimate Christmas music for misfits: Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. The Rankin/Bass stop-motion animation movie was always my favorite as a kid. As a bit of a misfit who was horribly bulled for a lot of my childhood, I identified with Rudolph in a way I’m not sure I really understand at 8 years old. And while I have a few choice words for his reindeer dad Donner and his questionable parenting skills, it is never truly Christmas until I get to hang with Kerby, Bumble, and Cornelius.
So, with the song set, I found the right notes (#MA3587F3, #MA358813, #MA3587F1) and a quarter rest (#MA3587FA) and let Cricut do her thing. Luckily, the shapes were relatively simple and they were cut out in no time.
For those of you who have a Maker – if you’re using 100% wool felt, I found I need to increase the pressure to get through the thicker material. While I usually go with the Fabric Grip mat, I also found that the Standard Grip (which is stickier) was better at this stage in the process for keeping this particular type of wool in place.
Then, following my sheet music, I got to work placing the notes on my stav, working between the quarter rests, taking care with my spacing and doing my best to stay in key.
With the music notes in place, I turned my attention to the instrument that was making all of this music! It just isn’t a Christmas skirt without some silver bells, merrily ringing away in Christmas cheer.
After finding a bell shape on Design Space (#M2FA50), I cut them out of a mix of the silver and red felt, with a few black accents. If you’ve never cut glitter on Cricut before, I’ve found putting it on the mat glitter side down to work best.
Once the shapes were cut, I used my favorite trusted fabric glue to adhere the pieces to one another – don’t be afraid to be liberal with glue here. The glitter-backed felt is really thick, and I like to make sure it’s really adhered.
I also decided to add a bow-detail to the bell, using a leftover strip of the black felt. I created two loops, and secured the bow with a few quick stitches, before adding it to my bells. Then, I tested the placement of the bells on the stave of my skirt, until it felt balanced.
As a fun finishing touch, I wanted an added bit of whimsey: what are bells without bells? So, I added a few jingle bells to make a bit of real music as I twirled. I threaded three belt on some multi strand thread, and tied then securely around the top of the bell.
Once I was happy with the placement of everything, I pinned all of the pieces in place. And then, Twas the Night of Appliqué. Although the music notes were blessedly large, there were quite a few of them. So, it was more like Twas The Three Long Nights of Appliqué.
For this project, some parts of the applique process I would hand sew, but I decided to start my machine sewing all of the straight edges of the music notes. This would ensure that the notes stayed as straight as possible (straight lines can go a bit wonky with hand-sewing). I started with the clef, and worked my way around the skirt, one note at a time.
Once the machine sewing was complete, I moved onto the hand sewing portion of the evening. I mostly did this for the base and top of each note, and any place where there were curved edges. I like to secure my applique with tiny, tight backstitches, which keeps the stitch nearly invisible.
I did the same with the bells, alternating between red and grey thread to make sure the stitches blended into the background as much as possible.
Somehow, after all that, the skirt still felt as though it was missing something. So, as an added feature, I decided to finish the design with a black trim around the hem. I cut multiple strips 1″ strips of the linen felt to make enough for my full skirt circumference (~220″), which I stitched together to create one long strip.
I pressed the seam allowance along the length of the strip and sewed it around the hem, with about 1/2″ of the black peeking out from the white. Because it’s felt, you don’t have to worry about hiding the fabric edge, so I could do it with a simple topstitch.
When it was done, I though it was the perfect finish. It really grounds the skirt, giving that bit of pop against the otherwise stark winter white.
With the bulk of the skirt done, I set to work to tackle the waistband, zipper, and a few final details. I went with a 9″ white lapped here (if you struggle with zips, I always highly recommend checking out Gertie’s zipper tutorial). I quickly got the zipper in place and moved on to the waistband.
Because I love the extra structure, I decided to add a 3″ wide waistband with a few rows of parallel stitching that are a JLC trademark. I quickly cut a 3″ by 32″ long rectangle out of the felt and a second out of a white Kona Cotton I had in my stash. I backed one piece with interfacing and stitched the waistband and waistband lining together, pressing the seam flat.
Then, starting from the top of the waistband, I sewed parallel rows of stitching at 0.5″ inches apart. I’ve shared this trick before, but a good hack for keeping things straight is to tape a flat edged guide at the correct measurement (like a piece of cardboard or, in my case, my guide for my sewing machine’s stitches). I made two rows of stitching and then stopped – so that I could attach the waistband to my skirt.
With right sides together, I sewed the waistband to the skirt and the lining, and then pressed it upwards. I then topstitched the final row of stitching, securing the lining to the waistband and completing the last of the 1/2″ parallel rows.
About halfway through this project, I had an inspired idea to mimic the stave in the waistband by sewing thin black ribbon in parallel rows. Luckily I found 1/8″ grosgrain ribbon that would be perfect. Working one strip at a time, I sewed the ribbon on top of the cream stitch lines I had already made.
I spent the next evening doing the finishes – I added two waist clasps and carefully pressed in my custom (GLITTER) labels from Heart of Wonder. When I put her on my dress form, I swear I could hear the first few notes of Rudolph start to play…
The Debut
This year, the most perfect coat that has ever coated appeared under my tree, thanks to my mom. Aptly named The Wonderland Coat, British Retro really outdid themselves when they designed this piece of sartorial perfection. Cherry red with a satin lining, the only song I heard this season was, Baby It Doesn’t Matter If It’s Cold Outside.
The minute I unwrapped it, I could think of no better pairing than with this skirt – like a melody and a harmony, hitting complimentary notes and giving me a soundtrack to walk down life’s runway to…
I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
I have always loved the holidays – even when they are fraught with drama or crazy travel stress or a pandemic that makes travel impossible, it will always bring about a bit of extra magic to make the hard moments a little less hard. And even though Christmas has passed and this project is a little bit late, I’ve decided that I could use some of that magic year round.
The truth is, other than the fact that Rudolph is playing merrily around her hem, this skirt has definite Year Round Potential. As someone who listens to Christmas music in July if I’m having a particularly bad day, I like the idea of having a multi-seasonal skirt in my arsenal. Ready and waiting to sprinkle that Christmas magic whenever I need it, to add a spring in my step and remind me that being a misfit is far more fun than a conformist.
Sending a little holiday magic to all of my fellow misfits out there, just in case you need it.
xoxo
Construction Details:
Circle Skirt: Self-drafted
Skirt fabric : 4 yards of 100% wool felt for the base from The Felt Store
Appliqué: Felt from The Felt Store & BBD Supplies
1/8″ grosgrain ribbon: JoAnn’s
Additional notions (zipper, thread): JoAnn’s
Outfit Details:
Top: WHBM (similar)
Skirt: Made by me!
Coat: Gift, British Retro
Brooch (that is secretly a hairclip): Pretty by Susan
Handbag: Mary Frances (similar)
Shoes: Steve Madden (similar here & here)
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