How to make a Ripple Skirt in 2 Hours

I have been a bit more inspired lately to try to make extra time to do some sewing for myself in addition to all of the money-making ensembles I've been recreating for the past two years.

This was an awesome piece of embroidered cotton voile that I've had in my stash for years. I've been wanting to do something with it for ages, but just never had the time. Last week I got tired of putting it off and decided to pull it out... above I've laid out the two and a half yards.

I decided I wanted a long narrow skirt with a long ruffle on the bottom. So I measured down as far as I wanted the straight part, and then cut the remainder in half for the ruffle.

Because the voile is sheer, this skirt needed an underskirt. So I cut out a piece of lining fabric the same size as the larger voile piece.

Then I serged everything!!! I went with white thread because that's what I had...

...but I used a narrow hem stitch in dark brown to finish the edge of the ruffle.

Then I gathered the top of the ruffle.

I sewed the large voile and lining pieces up at the side to create two tubes, then I pinned and sewed the tubes together at the top. The ripple voile, if stretched out, would be larger than the lining, hence the pinning and stitching to get it all to the same size without the voile stretching.

I then folded that top edge inwards and created three channels for elastic.

Elastic waistband!

I stitched the ruffle in, serged the edges again to keep it as neat and tidy as possible, and put a narrow hem on the bottom of of the lining.

And after two hours of work I had this gorgeous skirt!

I have fairly narrow hips - if your hips measure more than 40 inches, you are going to want more fabric to create this skirt, as you'll need to cut the top in two pieces. Or if you're going with a non-directional piece you can just buy your hip+ease and the extra for the ruffles. The nice fit of this skirt does come from the ripple voile, though, so I do advise finding something similar.