Sunday, April 28, 2013

How To Make a Homemade Tutu Skirt

Easy tutu skirt. no sewing.

I know I'm not the only person to have seen those tutu skirts floating around Pinterest. I think they are just about the most adorable things ever!

Last year when we decided to dress the kids up as Superheroes for Halloween, I knew instantly that I wanted the girls to have the tutu skirts as part of the outfits! There was only one problem: They are so expensive!

So it became necessary to make my own (because the idea of scratching the tutu idea never occurred to me.) After much research and trial and error, I finally figured out how to make a decent one...with no sewing required! If you know how to make a knot, then this will be a piece of cake! The skirts ended up being the easiest part of making their costumes...by far!

Items needed:
-Bolt of tulle in your main color. 5-6 yards should be enough unless you are making a skirt for a tall girl.
-Extra tulle in an accent color. 2-3 yards should give you a little extra.
-Extra tulle for the belt area. 2 yards so that you have a strip long enough. Save the extra for another skirt!
-Thin Headband (I picked up a six pack of Goody brand headbands for a couple of dollars)
-Scissors
-Roll of Paper Towels (or something else to use as a form for the tutu)
-A Board or something else that you can wrap tulle around. It should be twice as long as you want the skirt to be (not pictured)
No sew tutu skirt

You have two options with the tulle. You can buy them in pre-cut spools and skip the following steps, but it is more pricey. My goal was to save money, so I opted to cut my own tulle. You can get great deals on it by watching sales!

Unroll the tulle from the cardboard bolt and re-roll it evenly.

Here is the re-rolled tulle off the cardboard (so that you can cut through it!).

Now you are going to cut the tulle into four even sections. This will make super long stripes of tulle once it's unrolled. I put some pencils on the material below so that you can see where I made my cuts. The blue pencil marks that you will want to cut along the edge because that is the fold.

The four sections are roughly six inches wide each. Do not get caught up in making sure they are exactly the same. It's a waste of time since the whole point is to have a full and floofy skirt at the end!

If you bought a pre-cut spool of tulle, this is where you will pick back up in the tutorial. You still need to do the following steps to make shorter lengths to tie onto the skirt.

Working with one section at a time, unroll it around an item that is twice as long as you would like the skirt to be. I used the top of a tote. I first cut a bunch of tulle using the short side and the skirts were ridiculously short on my 18 month olds. I had to re-cut everything on the long side.  (I told you there was trial and error!)

Cut on both sides of the board or tote lid to make the stripes that you will tie onto the skirt.

Now you have two sections of tulle ready to be tied on. No need to keep them separate at this point. Just wanted to show you how nicely the tote lid makes uniform strips. Cut the rest of your strips in the same manner until everything is this uniform size.

Now the fun part! Grab your headband and paper towel roll. It's time to start tying!

Take two strips stacked together for each knot since the tulle is a little transparent. You can even do three strips together if you are feeling really daring!

Fold the strip in half and put it loop end down behind your headband.

Tuck the ends through the loop...


...and pull through.

Don't tighten it quite yet!

Tuck the ends through the same loop one more time.



Then tighten the knot down. Be careful not to tighten it too much or you will stretch the headband out.

That's it! Pretty simple! Keep going all the way around until you have a bunch of close knots and lots of gorgeous tulle.
I didn't do it with the skirt that is pictured, but you can also incorporate accent colors. I used an accent color for every third knot when I was making the girls' Halloween costumes. If you scroll to the bottom of this post, you can see the skirts with the accent colors in them.

Once you have your tulle knots all the way around, you want to use a complimenting color for the waistband. The easiest way to do this is to take a very long piece of tulle, roughly six inches across, and start wrapping from the mid-point. It keeps the tulle length even on both sides so that you can tie a bow at the back.

With your mid-point found, wrap one side of the tulle between each knot.

Then go back to your mid-point and work your way the other direction, wrapping the tulle between each knot.

This is what the front looks like when it is wrapped.

And this is the back with a pretty bow to finish things off!
Hallowee Tutu skirt costume

And here is Abby modeling a finished Tutu Skirt as part of her Halloween costume! The one she is wearing is red with blue accents so that you can see how pretty they look with the extra colors in them. Quick, easy, cheap, and fun! Do you want to see how the rest of our superhero costumes turned out for our quadruplets? Click HERE to jump to the post from last October!
costume for multiples or quadruplets
Don't forget to Pin this!  

Goodness, looking at those photos makes me realize how quickly they grow up! Hopefully they let me dress them up awhile longer before they start having their own opinion. 

21 comments:

  1. That is so cute! You amaze me with what you get done. I'm starting to think you have two extra arms hiding somewhere :)

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  2. Just precious! I see a few of these in our future!

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  3. That is too cute! Thank you for teaching me how to do this, I am thinking it can never be to early to start making halloween costumes, lol.

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    1. I completely agree! It got down to crunch time for me last year. In fact, I better start thinking about Halloween costumes now...

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  4. lol I used the same tutorial from pinterest to make my own (grown up) tulle skirt. black, with accents of black glitter tulle for a sassy witch costume. I also took it 3,000 miles with me on a trip that had a halloween party and it squishes pretty easily!

    for the grown up version you can tie the knots around a belt or wide piece of corresponding ribbon. I wore black tights under mine since it doesn't cover 100% and I didn't want to flash anyone ;)

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    Replies
    1. I haven't made a grown up version yet! Thanks for the tip about the belt or wide ribbon!

      And yes, tights are probably a good idea. ;)

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  5. Awwww look at your beautiful little Supergirl! This is so adorable and such a great idea. I love that no sewing is required!

    I am pinning this for future reference (just in case we have a girl)! :-)

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    Replies
    1. Thanks, Kelly! I can't sew, so this is about the extent of what I can do. ;)

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  6. What is the width of the fabric need to be?

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    1. It really doesn't matter. The wider it is, the fewer strips you will need. Mine ended up being about six inches wide.

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  7. I just stumbled upon your blog when I googled "how expensive is it to make a tutu." This is a great tutorial! How much does it cost to buy the materials? I am having a princess party for my little girl and would love to make all the little girls tutus to go with their crowns.

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    1. Oh goodness, I honestly don't know. I was buying material to make four different superhero costumes for my quadruplets. I'm guessing they are only $5 each to make. However, if you can find the tulle on sale, I'm sure you can make them more inexpensively. So sorry I can't give you a for sure answer.

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  8. About how many yards of tulle will I need? I'm making them for my twin nieces in alternating pink and white and purple and white.

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    1. You will need about 10 yards of tulle per skirt. For how I split my tulle up into different colors, you can check the part of the post where I list the items needed. Hope that helps!

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  9. I made this and added some glitter tule as an accent. It got extremely matted while my niece was wearing it. For sure won't be able to wear again. Is this how yours turned out? I was pretty disappointed. But the plus side your idea was super easy.

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    Replies
    1. No, I didn't have any issues like that. Ours are still as fluffy as ever. Did you try to wash it? I don't think they would wash well. Not sure what happened with yours. So sorry it didn't turn out like you hoped. :(

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  10. Thank you very much. Your posting is very great.
    witch costume

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  11. Great post. I am going to give it a shot, but I'm a little worried because I'm not that crafty.

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  12. Awww soo cutee thanks for sharing that with us!!!!!����������������

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