diy cottagecore pinafore skirt

If you follow me elsewhere, you’ll already have seen my Valentine’s photos! This year I had a lot of fun putting together a little self portrait photoshoot complete with a backdrop, props, and a new me-made skirt!

I shared the full shoot & some more details about my setup on my Patreon, but I wanted to come on here to share my process for sewing this skirt.

Using unconventional fabrics like curtains, bedsheets, or tablecloths seems like such a rite of passage in the sewing world – I actually had planned to make something out of a Christmas tablecloth, but when I went back to Homegoods mid-December they were all gone. Luckily, I planned in advance for Valentine’s Day and snagged a super cute gingham tablecloth with stripes of embroidered hearts.

Truth be told, I mostly winged it for this project. I knew that I wanted to make a gathered skirt with a waistband, but I figured I’d let inspiration (and how much fabric I had left…) guide me from there. I’d read a few online tutorials for making a simple gathered/dirndl style skirt, so I knew that all I really needed was a big rectangle for the skirt and a significantly narrower rectangle for the waistband. Gathering the skirt down was a bit of a pain – I ran out of bobbin thread halfway through one side so I ended up having two gathering points on that side because I didn’t want to redo it. I want to try the dental floss hack on a future project to see if that’s a little easier, because I do love me some gathering.

I did kind of a mediocre job of attaching the waistband. The one thing I wasn’t prepared for working with an “unconventional material” is that the cloth didn’t feel that much thicker than other fabrics I’d worked with, but once it was folded over multiple times, it got really bulky and more difficult to wrangle. It looks fine from the outside (phew) but things got a little haywire in there.

After completing the skirt, I had enough leftover that I could fully commit to the cottagecore fantasy and make it a little pinafore dress! I’d learned how to make a pinafore bib making the Charm Patterns Stanwyck skirt , so I felt confident enough to roll with self-drafting a heart-shaped pinafore top after looking at a lot of images of vintage patterns with heart-shaped aprons. I free-handed this and cut out a mock-up from some scrap fabric just to make sure I liked how it would sit on my bust, then went ahead and cut out two from my tablecloth to sew together to make the bib. The fabric was thick enough that I didn’t feel like I needed it to be interfaced, so I just had to make two tubes for the straps, and voila! Bib complete.

I’m really happy with how the skirt and the shoot in general came out. I paired the skirt with a Vacation blouse from Vixen by Micheline Pitt and the delightful pink Bruja hat from The Beheaded for a totally lovecore look. Big thanks to Sweetly Baked who kindly provided the darling macarons for my romantic indoor picnic! I purchased my coffin-shaped picnic basket from Witches by Helena Garcia and ordered my bouquet from local florist Flowers for Dreams.

I had a lot of fun setting up a whole little scene and shoot concept, and I’m looking forward to experimenting and pushing myself with self portraiture more through the year. If there’s another photo set theme you’d be interested in seeing, let me know!