Disney's Frozen Running Skirt Tutorial

Hello again!
As promised, here is my tutorial for the running skirt. As it's quite difficult to find these sparkly skirts I see being used in all the Disney runs here in the UK, I just have to make my own. And sometimes people even ask me where I got mine so that is definitely a compliment in my book *happy smile*. Clearly your skirt doesn't have to be for the Frozen costume, it just happened to be the one I was working on.

I really love this skirt. As I normally hardly ever wear anything sparkly, this is a real treat and I went all out :)

You will need all of the above items. I always buy 1m of the sparkly fabric as it gives me a nice square piece to work with. The sizes of the fabrics and elastic depend on your size of course. With the Cinderella skirt and the Santa skirt, I chose white lining. The fabric is quite see-through between the dots, and I needed the lining to show and to be white. Using white lining here dimished the icy-ness of the fabric a bit so I chose the blue lining to make the colour pop more.

 

Clearly I am incapable of proper pattern drawing so this was my pattern when I made the red version of this and it still works for everything. The fabric is 112cm wide, that is from selvage edge to selvage edge so not from where the shop cuts it. For me that is perfect as I use 1x the width for the waistband and 2x the width for the skirt. Now onto the sizes of the separate pieces. The waistband is around 10cm wide (or long however you want to call it), this varies depending on how much seam allowance I give but it's always at least 10cm. The skirt part is 24cm wide + seam allowance.

NOTE: cut the lining skirt part about 10cm wider, so 34cm + seam allowance.

Cut the fabric according to your size, here you see the piece on the left 112cm width of the fabric and 12cm for the size, and two pieces of 112cmx24cm. I never use a rotary cutter for this as the dots line up nicely and you're much more likely to get a straight line when following the natural lines in the fabric than by using a rotary cutter. NOTE: I always cut and sew between the dots.

 

Sew the wider pieces together to create one long piece of 224cm and then sew them into a tube. Sew the 112cm piece also into a tube.

Gather the skirt on one end and sew it onto the waist band.

Follow all the above steps with the lining. 

NOTE: I normally want the lining skirt part to be about 10cm longer than the actual skirt so I can give it a big folded hem and create a bit of puffiness. As you'll be added the ribbon to the skirt it will be much longer than the lining. I completely forgot that here so the lining skirt was actually too short.

I forgot to take a couple of pictures here, woops! Sew the skirt and the lining together on the top part of the waistband with the right sides together. Then turn them over so you see this.

Sew a casing for your elastic band, leaving a small opening to insert the elastic. The size of your elastic is entirely up to you. I use 1/4" elastic and the length always varies. The Santa skirt was a little too wide so I made sure I tightened this one a little. It should not cut off your circulation but it should also not fall down during your run so make sure it's comfortable but tight enough.

After inserting the elastic and closing the casing, the most difficult part of your skirt is done.

 

Now it's time to sew on the bottom ribbon. Depending on your theme/character/colour scheme, this can be any colour or design. Usually I use about a 1" wide ribbon, but because I found this fantastic blue snowflake sparkly ribbon in the card shop which is wider than that, I chose a 2" wide satin ribbon to make the snowflakes come out more. I would advise against using grosgrain as it's not going to be pulled anywhere and the satin just looks much better.

As the sparkly fabric doesnt fray, just topstitch the ribbon (or ribbonS in this case) onto the top layer of your skirt, about one dot from the edge. I try not to sew over the dots as that makes the needle all sticky from the glue. I sew the ends of the ribbon together last, otherwise I always have either too much or not enough.

There is another picture missing there, but you still have to hem your lining. Unless you have chosen a lining which doesn't fray (and if you have please tell me what it is!). Turn the bottom of the lining part of the skirt up to the required length. As mentioned earlier, the top skirt is now longer than the bottom one, so if you've considered this when cutting your lining (as I clearly missed in this case), turn it up so that it matches roughly with the top layer. If you want some of the lining to show, turn it up less. Make sure you turn it up so that the hem will be facing the top layer, otherwise it is going to get caught on your clothing all the time. You want the part that is against your skin/running trousers to be smooth. I could have unpicked my lining and overlocked it in place but I felt it wasn't worth it for the sake of maybe 1/2". Because the sparkly ribbon was a wired one, it kind of stands out anyway so the lining wasn't too much of an issue. With both the Cinderella skirt and the Santa skirt, I would have had to remake the lining as there I was counting on the additional volume the lining hem would give the skirt.

Taadaa! Once you've hemmed the lining, your finished result should look something like this. The great part about these is that you can make them as elaborate and as simple as you want. And yes, you can see the lining error a tiny bit but as I'll be wearing blue running trousers it won't matter too much.

I hope you liked this tutorial and that it all made sense to you. I must say that I actually prefer the sparkly skirts over the tutus while running. They look nicer in movement, are not as cumbersome to carry, and are so comfortable! I'll be posting pics of the run as soon as I have them so fingers crossed I can actually run part of it. But at least I'll look great in my Frozen Outfit :)