• Fabric—To see how much fabric you’ll need, see my previous post with circle skirt pattern and fabric calculation. I’ve chosen a brocade in a width of 29" (75 cm) from Sartor’s collection. For a 20" (50 cm) skirt my fabric table tells me I’ll need 2.8 yds (2.5 m)—to be on the safe side, I got 3 yds (2.8 m) to allow for a waistband and for any shrinkage.
• Underskirt—I made this skirt without an underskirt, but if you’ll wear tights with it (or want to keep your cool when a capricious breeze gives you a Marilyn moment), you’ll want to have one. An underskirt acts as a built-in slip, keeping your skirt from clinging to your nylon-clad legs. You can use an A-line cut, narrower than the skirt itself, so that even if you find yourself standing on a Lexington Avenue subway grate, your skirt can billow as much as it wants and the underskirt will protect your modesty.

Circle skirts are great for pockets because there’s plenty of volume to hide them at the seams. ???? I guess I always want a little something extra, so my skirt has pockets. But feel free to leave them out. How to make pockets would be an article in itself, so we’ll just go into that some other time.

First you have to sketch your pattern. You can use a large sheet of parchment or plain craft paper. Both work really well and are easy to come by. I’ve never had much use for classic pattern paper, it’s flimsy and kind of fussy to work with.

For longer skirts, you may want to skip putting the pattern on paper and sketch it straight to the fabric—then cut out the first segment and use it as a pattern for the others. This takes some experience—and it won’t work well with flowy fabrics—so in this tutorial we’ll work with a classic paper pattern.

First you have to calculate the radius of the circle at your waist using the formula

r = waist ÷ 6.28

I’m making a size 8 skirt with a waistline of 28.5" (72 cm) so in my case, r = 28.5 ÷ 6.28 = 4.5" (or r = 72 ÷ 6.28 = 11.5 cm). Next, figure the length of the skirt. I wanted the longest skirt that would fit on my fabric without dividing the pattern into more panels, so I went with 22" (55 cm). Most of the time though, you’ll be shooting for a particular length and figuring out how to lay it on the fabric so that it will fit. You’ll find details on fabric calculation and layout in the first part of this tutorial, circle skirt pattern and cutting.

On the paper draw a line the combined length of the skirt and the waist radius, in our case 28.5" + 4.5". Then add another line the same length at a right angle, starting at the same point. You can trace the shorter curve using an ordinary compass. To draw the hemline, just hold a tape measure in your left hand at the central point of the circle and with a pencil in your right hand trace the edge. If your skirt is longer than you can reach, get someone to hold the tape for you.

Be sure to wash and iron your fabric before you begin cutting. Always pre-wash the fabric the same way you’ll wash the garment once it’s made. If you plan to machine wash warm, then toss it in the machine and wash it on warm. If you’ll be dry-cleaning your skirt (this applies to most silks) then you needn’t pre-wash. I’m using a brocade made of polyester/rayon so I washed it on warm (40°C) and ran it through the dryer. Believe it or not, the brocade came out just fine; it shrank just a bit and the pattern is a tiny bit more raised from the surface than it was before washing. If you’re working with a fabric that frays a lot, like brocade, then you should finish the edges with a zigzag or overlock stitch before washing so it doesn’t get torn to bits.

Spread your washed and ironed fabric on a large table (or the floor) and align the edges of the fabric with the table top. The warp and weft should be perpendicular. Some of the more flowy fabrics tend to squirm around, so get your material under control or everything will come out crooked.

Plan how you’ll lay out all of your pieces before you start tracing. My 22" (55 cm) skirt will fit just right on my 29" (75 cm) brocade. If your skirt pattern doesn’t fit the fabric, you’ll have to divide it up. See how in the previous article on circle skirt pattern and cutting.

Lay the pattern on the fabric leaving room for seam allowance—I usually eyeball it, leaving about an inch (2.5 cm) at the edges and maybe one and a half inches (4 cm) at the hemline. Hold it in place with a pattern weight or a book, or pin it down, and trace with chalk. I always trace the upper and lower edges and then just draw the straight lines connecting them with a ruler directly on the fabric—it’s faster and more accurate.

Once you’ve checked and adjusted your size, finish your seams with an overlock or zigzag stitch. For fabrics that fray easily, you can use bias tape for a Hong Kong seam—this looks super fancy.

I pressed my seams open and then finished with an overlock. If your fabric is thin, you can also press to one side and iron them down before finishing. The back seam has to be pressed open because of the zipper.

There are a number of ways to sew an invisible zipper, but this is the one that works for me. The opening should be at least an inch shorter than the zipper. The bigger the difference, the easier it will be to sew.

Finish and press open the back seam of the skirt. Since you basted the zipper opening, it should be really easy to unpick now. The fabric will be nicely folded back exactly in line with the seam.

Invisible zippers have their teeth on the back—the face side is smooth. Lay the face side of the zipper along the face side of the opening, face to face, as shown in the picture. The teeth should touch exactly the ironed edge and the top of the zipper should lie with the pull just under the waistline (marked in the picture with a pin).

1. First get your waistband ready. I cut my interfacing first, marked the overlap and button area, and divided the waistline length in fourths to make sewing it to the skirt easier. Then I ironed it onto the fabric strip before cutting. It works better than cutting the fabric and interfacing separately. Since my fabric is only 29" (75 cm) wide, I had to add a bit at one end. Luckily, when you join brocade along the grain it makes an almost invisible seam, so you can’t tell.
2. Divide the skirt waistline in fourths. For circle skirts this is easy, because the quarter lines lie on the seams and the front center.
3. Pin the waistband to the skirt face to face as shown in the diagram, lining up the quarter lines.
4. Sew together and iron the seam towards the waist.

1. Put on the skirt and the shoes you’ll wear it with. This applies just as much for short skirts as long ones. High heels change your posture, which affects how the skirt falls in front and back.
2. Look in the mirror and decide on your ideal length. Move the hem up and down to see what flatters you most. You may be surprised. That’s one reason we have such a large seam allowance at the hemline. ????
3. Stand up straight and keep your head up (don’t look at the ground!) and let a friendly helper mark the length all around the hem. There are various tools available to make hemming easier. The best is a chalk hem marker, which is a sort of gadget on wheels – you just move it around the skirt and squeeze a little balloon to make a thin, chalk line on the hem. It’s pretty ingenious. But if you haven’t got one, you’ll do fine with a plain old tailor’s square or even a yardstick – just measure the length from the floor and mark the hem with pins.
4. Smooth the hem into a curve—lay the skirt out on your working surface and fill in the hemline with chalk. Depending on the fabric, you can get some pretty weird curves here—a fabric with a lot of drape may be significantly shorter on the bias, just because of how it hangs! A stiff fabric may have a wavy hemline, depending on how your folds fall. Just try to make a reasonably smooth line.