Hello! I have been looking to buy a skirt and have been thinking for a while to make one. What are the best materials? Suggestions on patterns? I am short and skinny so making one myself may be best.
Any help will be great!
Thanks!
Skirts are SUPER easy. Linen, wool, or silk are all period and awesome. Cotton can be good too. For any beginner skirt, I'd use linen, cotton, or silk because they tend to be the easiest to work with. Don't use a velvet or any textured fabric like that because they can be a pain in the backside until you know what you are doing. Even then, they can be a pain in the backside.
Measure from your waist to where you want the skirt to hit. For most people, this is in the 35~45" range. Due to that, you just use the width of the material for the length of the skirt. Buy about 4 yards of material. Cut a 3" strip off of the end of the yardage. You should have a 3" by 45" inch strip that way -it will become your waistband.
Pleat the remaining yardage to your waist measurement. So, if you have a 30" waist, pleat all four yards until you come close to 30". It doesn't have to be exact because a little bit of overlap is good. Attach the strip to the pleated section so it forms the waistband. Cut off any part of the strip you don't need. Make sure the waistband overlaps by about an inch or two so you add a hook and eye or a button on it. Sew up your single seem 8" below the waistband to the floor. Hem it. You have a skirt.
I like to use quilter's broadcloth for my basic skirts (http://pic50.picturetrail.com/VOL417/1033223/17691164/315717528.jpg). It's super-easy to work with, inexpensive (around $2/yard on sale), and comes in every color you could possibly want. It comes in both 100% cotton and a poly/cotton blend. I find the poly/cotton blend a little bit more user-friendly (it doesn't wrinkle as much or pick up as much lint, and it's a little less expensive), but both will work just fine.
As others have opined, skirts are the easiest to make.
Measure your waist and multiply by 3 inches. Measure the length you want it from the Natural waistline to your ankle. Using the Salvages as your top and bottom, one seam is all you need. Decide your hem, the gather the top into a comfortable waist band or make a channel for a drawstring or elastic instead. Very easy.
A skirt should take less than 2 hours if that. Good Luck
One thing I will say about the tube method Isabella and Lady Kathleen have described... if you have a *very* small waist, you may find that that's a lot of fabric to have bunched up around your waist. You might prefer to use a pattern that's slightly gored (made of panels that are wider at the hem than the waist). I use an old out-of-print Simplicity underskirt pattern, and I can't seem to find an easy do-it-yourself gored pattern online... but my guess is that most of the commercial "Renaissance" patterns from McCall/Simplicity/Butterick use a gored model, and can usually be picked up for 99 cents or $1.99 on sale. The technical drawing of Simplicity 2589 (http://www.simplicity.com/p-1547-costumes.aspx)'s underskirt looks promising (you would simply make all the panels from the same fabric).
I use McCalls 4090. So easy you won't need the instructions after the first time! ;)
If you don't like to iron (like me!), linen will look like you slept in it if you wash it and don't iron it.
On the other hand, don't use anything that doesn't breathe somewhat, if your faire is in a hot climate. Otherwise, you'll die of heat.
Gem, here is the site I used to make Michael's and my gored cloaks:
http://www.theweebsite.com/sewing/index.html
If the link doesn't work, follow the index to the right to cloaks..circular. Then, at the bottom of the circular page, you will see a hyperlink titled "Go on to Gores"
If you follow it down to the bottom, you will see instructions for a gored skirt.
Thank you for all the help. I plan to start making some soon and any advice helps as I'm not a newbie.