I had this scarf sitting in my closet for quite a while now. It was huge. I thrifted it some time ago, even though it wasn’t in wearable condition anymore. It had some minor bleaching and also some mothholes. But I liked it anyway, because of its floral print which reminded me of a russian scarf. I used to live near a Russian Church and always envied the old ladys who went there for their colourful floral wool scarfs.
Anyway, I had to do something with it or get finally rid of it. I could have made a pillowcase, which would have been easy, but since it was so huge, I had the idea of making a circle skirt of it.
I was lucky, because the mothholes and the bleaching were mostly located in the middle and on the edges, which were the parts I cut out, but I also had to remove another small piece, so I didn’t make a full circle. The following tutorial however is for a full circle skirt.
- You will need to make yourself a pattern. All you need is the length, that you want for your skirt and your waistline. You calculate the inner circle using this formula: waist = 2 * π * r. So if your waist measures 70 cm you get a radius of 11,14 cm.
- Now just draw a line from the inner circle to the edge that is as long as you want your skirt to be and draw a second circle.
- Put your pattern on the scarf and cut. Don’t forget to add seam allowances.
- Make one cut from waist to the seam and serge all edges.
- From leftover fabric or another piece of matching fabric cut a rectangular, that has the seam length as your waist and make a waistband (also don’t forget to add seam allowances)
- Sew the edges of the skirt together and leave room for a zipper.
- Sew together waistband and skirt part and sew in the zipper. To close the skirt you can add a button or hooklet or whatever you prefer. I added a button.
- Hem your skirt and you are done. But be careful to try it on first, so that you can even out any irregularities (I didn’t, so I still have some work to do).
I hope this was helpful to you. I only started sewing last year and this is my first tutorial. I really think this is pretty easy to do and suited for beginners. If you don’t have a large vintage scarf you might as well make a children’s skirt from a smaller one. You could also skip the zipper part by making an elastic waistline.
