Zero Waste wrap skirt
The 6-gore wrap skirt is my most popular post. I wear the original blue peanut print wrap skirt regularly in summer and always get a comment.
This week I revisited the the draft and made myself a new one. It’s about 10cm longer, and 7 gore instead of 6. With an odd number of gores, the skirt can be cut as a zero waste style.
This skirt is a little fuller than the original, since there’s an extra gore’s worth of flare in the hemline (about 25cm or 10″), and of course extending the length makes the hemline bigger too.
I used two lengths of 150 wide stretch woven for mine. I didn’t use the zero waste layout because the stretch direction would be wrong, however, the pieces exactly fitted across (using the selvedges too) so I had very little waste and I was pretty happy.
Enjoy the Zero Waste wrap skirt.
Cheers!
Hello,
This morning my daughter remembered that she would be attending a tennis themed party tonight and she had no white skirt. I might have thought, “too bad for you”, but she has an injury which means she will never play again, so I wanted to help. We looked on-line at what was available. Good grief! So much money for not much quality!
Then I found your wrap around skirt pattern. I had enough left-over white sheet fabric from a comforter I made earlier. Result: a well-fitting tennis skirt finished on time for the party. Very good. Thank you!
Kate
Seattle
Hi Kate, thanks for making my day sharing your story!
yea Thanks for your commitment
Thanks for the design! Appreciate the blog. Happy sewing! Angelina
Cheers Angelina! Many thanks for reading.
Hi Liz! I found your blog via your free zero waste scrubs pattern – so a huge thank you for that from the UK! That inspired me to look more into zero/low waste patterns – and thanks for all the info on your blog. I hate ironing and so tend to sew knits/jerseys. Do you think this skirt would work in a knit fabric? Many thanks and take care Donna
Hi Donna, yes, knit fabrics would be okay but depending on the knit you’d have to pay attention to the direction of the stretch.
Thanks for making scrubs!
Hi I ride horses and have been wanting to make a winter riding skirt. Do you think I simply lengthen this pattern to make one? Thanks
Hi Khris, to lengthen this skirt you would draft it as described and then just put a ruler on the side seams and extend them along the same plane. Alas, I don’t know anything about horses or riding skirts but I just had a quick flick through google images and they look very full. If needed you can make the skirt’s panels wider at the hem. Btw this skirt wraps 1.5 times around. Best wishes, Liz
Thanks for the tutorial Liz. I made a long 7 gore linen skirt with a flounce. The waistband is buttoned, I have a triangular patch pocket on one hip. Your instructions were so easy and logical. I was going to post a photo, but can’t see how to do this. The skirt turned out great!
Cheers, Lois
Hi Lois, that sounds like an awesome skirt! The flounce idea sounds wonderful.
Alas, I don’t think it’s possible to put photos in the comments.
So glad it turned out great.
Cheers!
Lois, the flounce sounds amazing. I would love to see it too if you have a link to someplace online, eg instagram or imgur?
Usually skirts have lengthway grain. If you cut the skirts gores the way it’s shown, wouldn’t it be a Crossway grain??? That will affect the way fabric moves and stretches. For a casual skirts it could work, but I would like to hear any observation or opinion about my question. I appreciate the clever way of not wasting fabric though. Maybe we can do this lengthway placement too??
Yes, usually they are cut on the longways grain, but often it’s OK to use the crossways grain. We already do this for some things, such as cutting a skirt on the crossgrain to take advantage of a border print.
It depends a lot on the type of fabric and the garment though, and you need to be careful with it. For example, the warp direction is more prone to shrinkage than the weft, so you need to be absolutely certain the fabric won’t shrink (because instead of getting shorter, the garment will get narrower). You generally can’t do it for knit fabrics, because you need the greatest stretch to go around the body. Clearly, it doesn’t work for napped fabrics and directional prints. As the warp direction is a bit stronger, and the weft direction is a bit stretchier, it’s desirable for things like jeans to be cut the regular way so they’re strong and have some give around the body.
Cutting across the grain has a great advantage for zero waste patterns, because it gives space to make the garment in bigger sizes. As garments grow more in width than in length, buy cutting on the crossgrain the garment can be made bigger simply by taking more fabric regardless of the width of the fabric.
You can also cut this skirt with a lengthways placement if it works for your fabric width. Thanks for raising this point!
Thanks for the answer in great detail. I am thankful that you spent time to answer my question, clearly from a very limited experience.
Yes, knit fabric also was a factor. Thank you so much!! I gotta try the method!!
I am super happy with your idea of zw. Besides what am to do with all the leftover bits. They are usually too small for much.
I will post a picture of the wrap around when I get it completed.
I hope you enjoy sewing it, Terrie, and look forward to seeing it finished 🙂