the shirt skirt!

so after 2 days of trying and trying to make this work for a skirt for maggie i finally did it!! now i am hooked. it was not easy - at least for me - but once i got everything figured out on my sewing machine it was :)

first i found this idea here, her skirts are below:















after i tried and tried to figure it out by using her post and the tutorial on shirring from portabellowpixie.typepad.com - the technique that causes the gathering - it still didnt work. so i read through the comments from here and found one who had figured it out. so i went to her blog and asked her to email me. so we emailed back and forth a couple of times and i sent her a pic of my shotty work :) to ask her if she had any opinions.























she sent me this link.

so i tried again. i took the bobbin area of my sewing machine apart and finally figured it out!

basically these are the things i had wrong:

the needle was in backwards :)
the upper thread was upside down on the spool pin
the bobbin tension was not tight enough

once i figured out everything i made this!























i dont have a before and after of this because i was so caught up in trying to figure this out that once i got it i just started sewing! but this used to be a tank top of my moms. i cut the top part off just below the straps - most of the ones you see out there on blogs come from tshirts and all you do is cut it off below the sleeves. then start sewing. thats it!

I LOVE IT!