Cancelled sophomore dance poodle skirt

[Muria]

So my daughter's high school social studies class has a "Decades Dance" as part of their final grade (they're in trimesters, so they just finished the class). She and her friends decided to do the rather overdone 50s poodle skirt. I personally find poodle skirts to be pretty cliché, but she's my daughter, so I agreed to make her one, and one for her friend. Fast forward two weeks ago, and the friend is having her skirt made by someone else's mom. All righty then. So we went out and bought 2 1/4 yards of 72" wide felt. Apparently, my daughter had no idea that it was a circle skirt, so she was pretty perplexed by the process.  Something I should mention here is that the math formula to figure out the radius of a circle doesn't seem to work very well with fabric. We wanted a 40 inch circle, so (having read other people's complaints about the failure of geometry to when making circle skirts), I cut a radius of 6 inches (which, according to my calculations, should produce a 37" hole). It was too big, but not excessively so. I'm forever grateful to rostitchery (of the infinity dress tutorial) for mentioning the whole circle skirt/geometry issue, so that I didn't attempt to cut it bigger. Anyway, because my daughter is lazy, I added a cotton fluffy slip built into the waistband (because otherwise she wouldn't wear it, and it wouldn't look even close to authentic). Basically, it's the twirly skirt pattern added as a slip.  

As it turned out, the dance was cancelled the day before (too many jobs that needed doing that no one wanted to do). So here's the poodle skirt, courtesy of my 4 year old son (because my daughter doesn't want me to take her picture in it):


He must be internet savvy already; notice the strategically placed track piece hiding his identity, so that decades from now, when his future boss goes looking for embarrassing pictures of him on the net, he'll have a lot harder time with the identification.  

By the way, I was a bit boggled by the poodle skirt pattern from the traditional pattern company. They wanted me to buy 3 3/8 yards of fabric. I'm not sure what I was going to do with the extra YARD of fabric they recommended, especially since I already had an extra 1/8 yard with my 2 1/4 (the other 1/8 yard was the waistband). It was even more fabric if I wanted to use 45 or 60 inch fabric. 

Comments appreciated!

[iuliasuavis]

You said that the poodle skirt was a cliche, but I liked how you made it in a non-traditional color. It seems like in all the old pictures they are either white or pink, so great job!

[Muria]

Thanks!  My daughter actually picked out the color (and there's no way I'd get her to wear it if it were pink but that's a whole other issue). 

[alwaysinmyroom]

Muria--you skirt turned out great!  I would not even have thought of felt!  What a cute applique as well...since the dance was cancelled, can you use it for maybe a Halloween costume?  Shoot, I'd wear it to go bowling!

[Muria]

Thanks! Oddly enough, felt is apparently traditional for poodle skirts (or so I was told by my daughter, and several websites when I didn't believe her).   

My daughter has Opinions about Halloween costumes (mostly: it must be animé related), so unless someone can find me an animé or manga with a poodle skirt in it, I'm out of luck there. I could see this particular skirt going quite well with the rental shoes at the local bowling alley, though. Might have to mention the idea to her. 

[marypoppins]

Brings back memories!  For my daughter's freshman year, her choir had a 50's dance and I made her a pink "poodle" skirt.  Instead of a traditional poodle or record...she had a skull! 

I remember how hard a time I had in trying to figure how just how much to cut.  I ended up just folding the material into quarters and cutting a very small circle to start.  I then just cut a slit so she could get into it and then trimmed the waist hole until it was the right size.