A Skating Skirt

Evelyn has been growing like a weed these last few months. Quite literally like a weed. All height, not width. It's always been a problem finding things that are narrow enough around for her teeny little waist and bum. There are no pants, really, zip up style pants that fit. None. And even leggings are hard to find to fit her. The reason is that waist wise, she's still in the 18 month to 2T range. At four and a half. But lenght-wise, she's in a five, even a six. Looooong legs. The good news is that she's not really a pants kind of girl so far. Her daily attire rotates between tights, tee shirt, sweater, skirt and leggings, tee shirt, sweater, skirt, with the occasional dress thrown in the mix now and then. But really, it's mostly about skirts. And she has lots of skirts. Except I realized the other day that, on anyone older than, say, 6, most of her skirts would be obscene. Definitely not "dress code" length. She's obviously grown yet another inch lately, revealing a little too much of that cute bum. Not that I don't like to see that cute bum, but you know, we are getting ready for Kindergarten next year, its probably a good idea to learn to cover up a little :).
I've had a few skirt patterns on the sewing table for a while, and I will get to them, but when I saw this tutorial over at Sew Mama Sew, I thought it might be the perfect quick fix, replacing at least one of our too short skirts. The only problem was that it involved knits.
Sewing with knits have never been my favorite. Actually, i can't even say that, I've just avoided them pretty much entirely since the time I tried to make a corset-like stretch faux velvet vest back in high school (Don't ask, I was really into E.M Forrester and Jane Austen). So the prospect of making a whole (little, but still) skirt out of knit had me questioning myself a little. I didn't have a ball point needle, surely it would snag, it would end up lumpy, the pieces looked way too small, even for my tiny girl. I, I, I, ok, I was just chicken. But I forged ahead and wow, I think I'm hooked. I'm not sure what I was panicking about! In fact, I've already promised at least one more form the fabric on hand, another for the beloved Eliza and I'm thinking I might need one for myself as well. My only grumble is that you still end up wiht raw edges. I'm sure the person who wrote it had a serger to take care of that, I really wish I did, but I don't. Might have to work on a way to conceal the seams a little.
For once a skirt is long enough on my girl without slipping down her hips to reveal a little, ahem, crack, a hundred times a day. She has declared it to be "the skating skirt" (skating is becoming a bit of an obsession here) and has twirled and rolled on the floor and she may or may not have slept in it last night and then carried on wearing it this morning. Now I'm eyeing a t-shirt pattern I have on hand as well (and fabric too, courtesy of my Mother in Law who had more faith in my sewing skills than I did and bought it for me ages ago).

Have you tackled knits? What's your favorite thing to sew with them (see, now I'm one of those obsessed converts!)