4.12 how can I make a full skirt/ballgown skirt/net skirt?

From: Jilli
This is how I get most of *my* ballroom skirts -- off of old prom & bridesmaid dresses. =)

1. Start scouring thrift stores. Look in the "formal dresses/evening wear" section. If you look long enough, you will find some sort of prom/bridesmaid dress with a layered chiffon ballroom skirt. Make sure the waist of the dress fits you (or has extra gathers of fabric in the skirt that can be let out), then buy it.
2. Go to the fabric store. Buy a package of wide bias tape that matches or complements the colour of the skirt on the dress. (I have been known to use satiny quilt binding for this -- it's wider, and looks more like a "real" waistband.) Also pick up matching thread (or, if you don't know how to sew, get a bottle of sturdy fabric glue or some of that "stitch witchery" iron-on seam binder).
3. At home, lay out the dress on a table, or hang it up someplace where you can work on it. Carefully cut the skirt off the dress, above where the waist seam of the dress is. (Most of these dresses are a bodice with full skirt sewn onto them -- if you are careful about your cutting, you will leave a seam that keeps the top layers of skirt fabric together.)

   If the waistband of the dress has the skirt fabric gathered together, this is where you might want to cut off the waist seam entirely and re-gather the fabric to better fit your waist.

4. Once you have the top layers of the skirt either gathered to your liking or just hanging from the original waist seam, sew/glue/stitch-witch your bias tape on as a waistband.

This works *great* on thrift-store rescued wedding dresses. I have a wonderful deep plum satin skirt with a bustle and slight train that started out its life as the long trained (no bustle) skirt of a wedding dress I bought for $15. 4 rounds of rit dye, pleating the excess fabric to hang in the back, and adding a waistband took 5 days, and that was only due to the extensive dye baths.

From: karasu
You'll need:
--Regular (zipper or button) ankle-length skirt
--70-80 inch long, maybe as wide squarish piece of _lightweight_ fabric
--One drawstring or any piece of cord or ribbon you can tie around your waist

_or_

--Drawstring ankle-length skirt
--70-80 inch long, maybe as wide squarish piece of _lightweight_ fabric

Here's what you do:

If you're using the first set of items, put on your regular skirt. That's going to be the underskirt.

Now take your square of fabric and lie it flat on the ground, 'right' side or the side with the pattern down. Lay your cord or drawstring across the middle of it. Fold one half of the fabric over the cord(the ends should meet). Pick up the cord with fabric hanging off of it and tie it around your waist (this is why you want a lightweight fabric, unless you don't mind tying the cord very tight to hold the fabric up).

Chances are, all the fabric will be gathered at the back. Tugging horizontally towards the front (not up or you'll get the ends out of whack), tug the fabric around, a few short pulls at a time, to where the ends touch in the front. This'll cover up the cord completely, but you might want to safety-pin the ends together on the side facing your "underskirt" just to make sure dancing or whatever doesn't pull them back apart. Tug back or forwards to adjust the "gathers."

For people with drawstring skirts and the panel of material....

Hold up the drawstring skirt in front of you where the top is hanging open. Grabbing one end of the fabric, pull/stuff it through the top of the skirt until it looks like half is hanging inside the skirt and half outside. Carefully pull the skirt on and tie the drawstring to where it's a snug but still comfy fit.

Your material is probably again going to be gathered all in one place... tug it horizontally around until the ends touch in the front. Tug up or down to make sure the "hem" length is even, as this is a little trickier since you can't lay out the fabric flat first. You can safety-pin the front part here too if you like, but three hours of hard, calf-murdering dancing didn't really budge mine all too much. :)

Voila... you now have a flowy/flouncy/gathered overskirt which should hang down in the front at just enough of an angle to expose the underskirt underneath. I'm 5'8" so using an 85 inch panel curtain just brushed the floor, but you could easily adjust the length by what size panel of fabric you use in the first place. This is certainly not seamstress-level work but for a semi-lit club and $5 it's not bad. :)

From: Thessaly
The general "low tech way" to make a tulle skirt is:

Get about 10 yards of tulle. Do a running stitch along one long side. If you want the skirt to be short and puffier, do it on the fold; if not, unfold it and do it on an edge. This means you should have a stitch that runs the whole 10 yards.

If you want to, you can gather it by simply dragging the one long piece along the thread until it bunches, or you can go the high tech way, which is to do two sets of running stitches, about an inch apart, starting at opposite ends. Anchor one to the right end and the other to the left end. Pull on the loose threads. (I don't know if this would gather as evenly, but it should leave you with a flatter panel to stitch the waistband ribbon onto.)

Get 2 yards (or however much you need to go around your waist and then tie a knot/bow and hang down... I'd say around 2 yards should work unless you're quite voluptuous...) of wide black ribbon. 1" to 1-1/2" wide. Stitch your mess of gathered tulle to this ribbon at the gathered area, in the center of the ribbon. Then you can just tie the whole mess around your waist.

You can also then do whatever you want to the hem with scissors, ribbon, etc. Some ppl like to stitch a slender ribbon to the edge of the tulle that they aren't gathering... if they want to do that, they need to do it before they gather it, and will probably be happiest using a sewing machine. But aside from that, this is really easy and fast to do by hand and shouldn't really take more than an hour or two.

There are more complicated ways to do this, but they usually involve elastic, linings, fastenings, serger machines, etc., etc... If you do this style (which is basically what they told you to do in the "make it" column of Sassy when I was in junior high), you have the added bonus that you can arrange the bow in back to look like a bustle. Heck, if you tie it over a tulle bustle, you won't be able to see the gap. :)

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