Algebra, Bears, and Dress Up Skirts

I have been wanting to practice more clothing sewing, but I hate that everything I make still looks homemade, and not in the cute, I could have paid top dollar for this at a craft booth way. I do understand, though, that the only way to get better is to practice. So I decided to start making skirts for my daughter's dress up box.

I recently ran across this tutorial on gathered skirts over at Ikat Bag and I decided that this might actually be a simple enough process for me to make my way through. I was particularly pleased that she used algebra. She called the waist measurement A and the length B and the whole thing made a lot of sense to me.

In my head.

In reality, I made these three skirts for the same little girl:

Yeah, it's like the three bears were doing the sewing. The green plaid is too big, the white one with flowers is too little, and the pink one is just right (mostly).

The green plaid skirt, the one that is way too big, was the one I made using the magical formula from the website, which for some reason or another didn't work for me. Happily, though, I am making these for a dress-up trunk and wanted various sizes and lengths that would work for little girls in a three year old to seven year old range, so the green plaid skirt is still a keeper.

The floral skirt is actually a pillowcase.

I though that since my goal was a rectangular tube that I would then put a waistband on, a pillow case would work well. It actually would have been the perfect size, but I second guessed myself while my model was asleep and brought the waist in a little too much. This one actually does fit, it's just a little snug and for a growing girl, snug won't last long.

But for now, it's cute.

The pink skirt was almost perfect. I was thinking I wanted it a little longer for a dress up skirt, but she likes it, and that's all I really cared about anyway. It's a little lose, but that makes it easier for putting on over clothes while dressing up anyway.

After making those three skirts, I finally found my own magic numbers (which turned out to be more like A + (2/3)A and less of a 2A+1, but whatever) and made this purple skirt:

It has the waist the size of the pink skirt with the length of the floral, so really, this is the "just right" skirt I was looking for... it just took me three tries to get there.

Correction: Four tries. I think maybe this inability to count might factor in with my sewing troubles.