Scrap Box Skirt Project

In May of last year, Doodlebug got her first sewing machine. Since then, I have been trying to find ways to get her excited about sewing. She likes to sew but if it takes a bit too long, she passes it over to me and asks for help and the next thing you know, she is gone. So, I thought I would try and inspire her to practice her seams by sewing together blocks to make a funky little scrap box skirt. We had so many bright and colorful scraps in her box and I had quite a few scraps left over from a few summer outfits that I made her this year. Doodlebug loves bright, jazzy, mix match clothing so, I had great hopes she would be excited about this project.

We dug through the scrap box to pull out pieces to cut. Our only requirement was that the pieces were big enough to cut a rectangle from, color was not a consideration. We decided on a basic size and stack cut blocks using the prior block as our pattern. We did not concern ourselves with making sure they were a perfectly cut block, as long as they were close that was good enough. After all, Doodles is only seven and the project was for practice and the seams will not be perfect anyway.

When we finished cutting, this is what our stack looked like.


We didn't want to cut too many blocks of the same piece of fabric and we had very little of some of the fabrics, that wasn't a concern.

To make it more fun, I decided to add a bit of randomness to the project and we tossed all of the pieces into a paper bag, shook it up and started pulling our blocks out without looking and stitched them together however they came out of the bag. It was fun. Doodlebug seemed to enjoy it too.


I sat her machine up beside mine and I sewed some too right along with her. I figured if I helped her stitch blocks it wouldn't take too long or she may lose interest.

We stitched the blocks together to make rows. We had no idea how many we would need so, we just stitched until we felt as if we had enough, keeping in mind, we would be gathering each row. After the blocks were stitched together, I went over them with the serger to prevent them from fraying.





Once we felt we had enough to make a very full skirt and would be long enough, we gathered the sections and sewed the rows together. We folded over the top section to form a casing for elastic and stitched it around, leaving an opening for the elastic. We added the elastic and stitched the casing closed, made a very narrow hem and we were finished.

I am going to see if in the future, I can inspire her to think about all the things she could make by stitching together her scraps and mine as well. It was a great opportunity to talk to her about how many years ago folks had to stitch together scraps and such to create useful things they needed such as, patchwork clothing and quilts.She said she really wants to make a quilt sometime. I think that would be a fun winter project.

Blessings!