(upbeat music) - Hello, and good
morning, I'm Morgan Donner and it is another beautiful day. I was kind of thinking
recently, Remember that video I made two videos ago
with the shenanigan pants? While I was drafting out
the pattern, you know, I was kinda thinking, oh, how fun, this is basically like
doing a circle skirt, which got me thinking,
I've never actually done a circle skirt and I kind
of feel like it's one of the quintessential sort
of basic beginner projects that a lot of people do
when they're learning to sew because pattern,
drafting-wise, it's so easy. Sewing-wise it can be a
little tricky, but you know, it's like a good level of beginner tricky. I just, for some reason, never did that. And so I decided why not? No time like the present. And I went ahead and
made a full circle skirt, which is delightfully swishy
and full, I am a big fan. And I guess because I'm
a bit of a completionist I also made a three-quarter circle skirt, a half-circle skirt, and a
one-quarter circle skirt. I've got to say, I do not
recommend that last one. At least I personally, not a very big fan. It's just not very full, but that's fine. It was still really fun though, because now I have so many
winter skirts and it kind of like woke up something in my brain. My introduction to sewing was a lot of rectangular construction. So many historical garments
are focused on being made out of rectangular shapes
to make the sleeves and the torso and the everything. What if you took that same
problem-solving mechanism, you know, making all of
your bits out of rectangles and instead tried it with circles? Can you make a circle dress? Can you make a circle shirt? You can definitely make
a pair of circle pants, 'cause that's basically what
the shenanigan pants are. They're a half circle
that was made into pants, so that one's kind of taken care of, but I still really love the
idea of trying to explore using this shape that I just
kind of never did before. So you know what, let's
see what we can make. So I think I'm gonna go
ahead and try a shirt first. I have some linenesque, but
probably is cotton fabric lying around that I think
would make a very lovely shirt. I'm gonna try opening it up,
folding it into quarters, folding it some more so
that I can just kind of do like a really quick cut to
make it a really big circle, as big as I can do on
the fabric without having like additional seam lines. And then I think I could
actually probably use the leftover bits at the
edge of the circle and, you know, I might need to piece
them together a little bit to make them a little bigger,
but I think I can reuse those to make the neck line facing. And I haven't decided what
neck line I'll do just yet. Maybe a circle, maybe like a diamond shape would be kind of cool. Once I've made those, of
course I'll need to to hem the bottom of the circle so that it's not raw-edged fabric anymore. And then for the facing,
what I'll do is put it down in the middle of the circle,
maybe scooch it forward a little bit 'cause neck
lines are usually like a little bit forward on the body. Stitch that kind of in place with whatever neck line I've chosen
and flip it inside out and then tack down the loose edges inside. And then I should have a completed circle with a hole in it, for my head, basically. And we'll see how that works. All right, reveal time. This is not the look I was going for. So let's do a little bit more. Maybe if I like make
it so that these parts are connected down here,
it'll feel a bit more like torso piece and sleeve piece or, I also, I feel kind of like
it's a little bit long, like I could hem the circle up
so it's a little bit shorter, both on the sleeves and on the torso area. But before I do that, let me, let me try out some other things first. That is a little bit better,
not a lot, but a little bit. You know, I kinda want to try
like pinning the sleeves up. Let me grab a pin. That's maybe like a tiny bit
better but still a little, a little iffy and I'm not
sure that you could wear pants or skirt like over
this because the sleeves connect to the waist down here. I guess you could, you could
just, you just have this weird, like bulky part coming out
over the top of your waistband, but like it's doable. I feel like something like
this could be kind of a cute like beach cover and go over a swimsuit. I don't think I have a
swimsuit that I can demonstrate that for you, I don't
do a lot of swimming. I wonder if I could make a swimsuit. Are there medieval swimsuits? I don't think I have
yet achieved something that I would just wear. So, you know, requires a little bit more kind of playing with it. I do think that the big
like kind of angel sleeves are very fun, it's just
not, not quite right yet. So things I could try next,
I could try shortening it. I think that would help
with some of the weirdness. I also think that once I wash it, because this fabric is unwashed, that would take out some
of the sizing and make it a little bit less stiff. Like it would be more likely
to kind of collapse on itself and just look more short-like, maybe. I think I actually want to
try to see if I can add holes about here-ish for my arms to go through. So this will become like
basically a tank top rather than being connected from waste to the sleeves. And maybe I could do like a
small set of circles or like half circles to be like cute
little fluttery sleeve caps. That could be really fun. Hold up, JK, I did a little
bit more fussing with it and this actually kind of works. I could dance to this. It has kind of like a
little bit of Grecian vibes, the statues, with all
the drapery of goodness. Like I'm not usually a like
bears my arms type person, but I don't know, I kinda
dig it, especially with, you know, a skirt in my
case, but I think actually pants would work okay,
as long as you're using a really thin fabric. And this is just safety pins, I just safety pinned all
the way to the neck line. That's all I did. It looks like a flowy drapey top. Like, you know, the
parts hanging down here is definitely unusual, but
because the side was sewn up, you know, there there's
no side boob or anything inappropriate, I guess,
like not bad, not bad. I still want to experiment with
my idea of adding arm holes and sleeves to make this
like just the torso piece. But I feel like this is worth
consideration in the future. So just a very quick mini
update with kind of like a sleeveless version
of what I was thinking. This is kind of cute. Like I feel like I've been,
you know, seeing some stuff lately about body neutrality
and I feel like this kind of fits that vibe of, you know,
it's just loose and flowy and nice, and you're not
worried about what shape your body is making underneath,
which is kinda neat. But I was also kind of curious
how it would look with like, you know, a belt situation
to cinch things in. And it is cute. It is tricky to get all
of the, the peplum ruffles to be kind of even, they're,
you know, they're not, you know, maybe that's
just something you would have to accept with a
top like this, unless you specifically trimmed it or,
you know, just let it be very fun and wild and call it good enough. So this is cute, but I am
going to continue with my idea of adding like a little, little
ruffle sleeves or should I go for like elbow
length, like full sleeve. So I cut out a pair of
little half circles from the full width of the same
fabric that I had before. And now I've got kinda a pair
of cute little half circles. I can either put them on
this way so that the kind of half the circle falls
over my arm and create, I really like elbow length sleeves. It just is often my preference. I also, I, do still kind
of like the look from the previous before I cut
the arm holes with like kind of like a slit, an
opening going from the top of the arms down. Like I feel like that could
be a really cute orientation. I think, I think I'll try this
first and here we are again with sleeves now, I do
like how very unrestrictive this feels, but let's
give it another try on with the skirt and with a skirt. So I, I actually kind of
really like how the length of the sleeves is kind
of approximately the same visual length of the top
with something on, like, I don't know, I feel like
that just works really nicely. Yeah, I'm curious to
see what this looks like once it's been washed. Also, full disclosure, I have
managed to spill some coffee near the back neck line here. There's a few chalk marks on this. I think, I think there's
mascara right here. Yeah, so it could use a wash
anyway, let's go see if my, my theory of this looking
a little bit different once it's had a wash
and dry trip, let's see if that holds true. While this is washing and drawing though, Do I want to try another
shirt or do I want to jump to a new thing? I kinda, I do kind of
want to try some of the, the thoughts I've had about
turning circles into dresses. I have some really pretty
pink, red, orange silk that I've been hanging on
to 'cause it's so pretty, but I've never found the
right project for it. And you know what? I think it would make a really cute dress. It is the next morning and
here is my cutout version of the dress that we're
gonna try and make a next. It's actually two pieces here. The fabric is only so wide. So in order to have the
dress be as long as possible I didn't cut it all in one circle. Instead I did two half circles
that are then gonna get stitched up the middle. I have found that that is
kind of one of the downsides of this whole circle patterning
business is I feel like your much, much more impacted by the width of whatever fabric you're
using than most other types of patterning. Now, there are ways to
get around that of course. You could absolutely, you
know, make your circle as big as you want and then
just piece in additional parts at the edges as needed. Alternatively, you could
cut it into slimmer sections so that you can then just
sort of put the skirt pieces down normally like you would
for most other, you know, dress and skirt pattern pieces. However, that doesn't feel
like it's within the spirit of the circle skirts
and, and that of thing. So I'm gonna try as much as
possible to stick with doing a little piecing as
possible and just using this whole big section of
fabric, because I feel like part of the interesting
thing with circle skirts is that you're gonna have
the bias hanging a little bit differently than the rest of the fabric, which if you have a patterned fabric, that can be really interesting and cool. And, you know, just I feel like it's a slightly different thing. You know what I mean? Anyways, so next on this,
I'm going to go ahead and stitch that center seam. And I think that for the neck
line, I'm going to try and do like just a split in
the middle of the skirt. And I think that that will
actually really nicely create this kind of like V neck line, like you see on a lot of summer dresses. And I think I'm going to add some straps, which I know aren't
circles, but, you know, Hey, I also added a waistband to the skirt, so there's going to be some
flexibility there, right? Then I'm going to make a
bunch of very narrow strips of fabric, some of which
are going to become strips for binding the neckline so
that kind of like bias binding, it's going to cover the raw edges here. First I'll sew one edge
then you sort of flip it to the other side so it's
covering both edges of the fabric. And then I like to hand sew
it in place when it's such a small piece like this area is. You can absolutely machine
sew it I just find it a little easier when it's so
small to do it by hand. And then I'll use more of
those narrow widths of fabric to make sort of spaghetti
straps for the dress. So to do that, I will take
a length of cord and fold it in half and I'll use
the loop end to sort of stitch it in place to the end of the cord. And then I'm going to sow it
inside of this tube of fabric, making very careful that you
don't accidentally catch it while it's in the middle of that tube. You only want the end. Then you're gonna stitch all
the way to the end and use that same string to pull the
fabric inside out on itself. There's lots of really
cool tools to do this, but this is handy when you
don't have any of them like me. Once they're completely
inside out and ironed flat, I'll go ahead and take
those and just stitch them to the dress to make little
straps to hold everything up. So this is my, I guess,
dress, it feels a lot like a slip that you would wear like to bed or just kind of around the house, especially with like such little straps. It's definitely not my usual for like, especially in the winter,
but just in general. I dunno, I don't tend to go
for like little strap things. However, I think that
this is kind of cute. It's given me a vibe that I'm
not quite sure how to name, like something about this as
a very distinctive aesthetic that, not sure what to call it. Maybe you guys will be able to
like put words to what it is that I'm probably thinking
of and just not able to name, but, like it's very kind of summer casual in a fun loosey-goosey way. I do want to see what she
looks like with a belt, 'cause I think part of
the fun of this is that theoretically, you know, you
have a lot of fullness coming down below the belt. So like, I would think that
would make this very cute. All right, well, it has potential. I think, I think maybe
it's not quite there yet, but maybe with a bit more fussing I could figure out something. I do feel like this feels like it'd be a really good layering piece. I just have to like take
the time to try it on with a bunch of different
stuff to figure out what particular layer stuff
I want to go with it. Maybe a hat. It's much cuter with a hat. It is still very silly, but I don't know. It's a very cute sort of silly. Anyways, so I didn't say that
this video was going to result in super successful pieces. You know, if we get even
like semi-usable items that I can sometimes wear,
you know, good enough. It's really more about the exploration. So now that I have a very
interesting, almost negligee but also not dress, and I've
got, you know, these sleeves, what do I want to make next? Oh, we've got a lot of like
lightweight, almost like summery items with the dress and the top, but we've got a winter skirt. So maybe we should do some sort of like wintery covering shawl cape cloak. Yeah, let me go cut out
some circles of wool and sew we can come up with. I decided for the coat layer
of this little experiment, I'd go with this really
thick marigold wool fabric that I've had lying around. It's so thick that like a coat is just the absolute perfect thing for it. I went ahead and marked out a full circle and then cut it out. From there, I folded it in
quarters so that I could cut out a line from the center
to one of the edges. That's going to become kind
of the opening of the coat. And then I cut out a little
circle around the middle to become the neck line. I gave it a really quick
try-on and it looks like it's basically about the right size, maybe a smidge longer than I
need, but I think it's fine. I'm gonna go ahead and leave it as it is. It's always better to cut off more later if you really need to. And I think I'm going to
actually do some dressing up of the edges. This material is so thick,
it's definitely not gonna fray on me, but I think that
adding some trim to the edge makes it just a little bit more sharp and more like it's meant to be a coat. So I went ahead and stitched
on a bunch of black trim all around the neck, front, and sort of bottom edge of the circle. And now that those edges
are done and it indeed looks kind of extra like sharp
and defined in a way that I think a lot of
outerwear just tends to be a little bit more structured. So because this is such
a loosey-goosey pattern, I felt like adding a
bit of visual structure with design elements would hopefully help. So let's see, what side is the outside? The inside and the outside
aren't really much different it's just that there's
slightly nicer stitching on the outside. I think I'd still like
to add just a few more decorative elements, like
I think this would be really cool with some
like very big statement, style buttons, I don't even
need them to be functional. That's fine, I could make
them functional, I suppose, but eh, I'm not gonna
worry about it too much because I think that instead
of using like buttons or some other sort of
closure in the front here, what I'm gonna do is overlap
them and then maybe add like little cuts in the side so that a belt could go over it. I wish I had a really thick
belt out of black material. I have this, this red one, so, you know, adding this, a nice thick
waist to kind of help bring a little bit of definition
into what is otherwise a bit of a flowy garment, I
think would be really nice. Can I just put this on backwards? No but I would still
have like a red doable. Well, maybe that would at
least work for showing you what it might look like. Anyways, so what I will do is cut open a little opening in the side. I probably should bind
it as well, so that like, it matches the things, but maybe later. And then I can try that on. If I decide I don't
like the way this looks, then maybe I'll just make my own belt. And then after this guy is all done, I kind of want to experiment
with maybe something resembling head wear,
like, or maybe like a scarf would be kind of fun. This, I actually think
would be really cool if I did like a second
circle so that it was like a little like capelet over
top, but maybe in the future, for right now, I think
I'll stick with like a really kinda the look I
already have in my head. For the accessories, I'm going
to take some of my smaller stash items, stuff where I
have like a yard or less left and I will take these
and cut full circles or half circles depending on what
kind of fits the particular scraps the best. While I go ahead and work
on getting these cut up, I would like to talk to you really quick about the sponsor of today's
video, is Skillshare. Skillshare is awesome in
general for learning new stuff. It's my literal lifeblood. I love learning new things
and Skillshare is absolutely fantastic for that. But more specifically, I've
been really into learning about Procreate lately,
which is a drawing program. I got a tablet recently and
I've made it kind of my, my light, my casual new
year's resolution to do a bit of digital drawing every day. Skillshare has tons of classes
on Procreate, thank goodness, because I don't know what I'm doing. Like Intro to Procreate by Brooke Glazer. She has a ton of classes on
that particular drawing program, but what's really cool
is that she goes back and keeps it up to date So lots of programs will add
new features or move things around from year to year. And she goes back and
make sure that those, those intro courses are still up to date and still make sense. And that's really, really awesome. Whether you're interested
in drawing programs or music or web design or anything
else under the sun, Skillshare is gonna have
something that you're gonna enjoy learning about. And the first 1000 people
that use my link in the description are going to
get the first month free. So absolutely check it out, I
think you guys will enjoy it. Now that I've cut out several
of the potential accessories, let's go ahead and put on
the base layers and then try them all out. So starting off with this blue piece, it can be worn as a
shawl, maybe even belt it as a sort of top of sorts. This green one is very similar,
but maybe a little smaller. And I feel like it works
really nicely as a scarf. Here's another green one that is not cut, it's just a full circle,
and I think this one looked really nice with
like a big, heavy pin kind of wrapped around your shoulders. Alternatively, you can sort
of pick up the top half of the circle and flip it
up over your head to make like a little hood. And you can maybe futz with
a pin placement until you get the look, the drape, the
proportions that you're after until you've achieved, you know, peak green riding hood aesthetic. Instead of a pin note,
you could also use a belt which looks pretty dang cute. And if you put that top
back down, the hood down, you get kind of like a
statement, color effect, which makes me feel a little
bit like a cottage core goes corporate poison ivy. I also took a full circle of
the same fabric as the shirt and fold it in half and then
fold it an edge to get like a bit of a brim. And that makes a very
nice bandanaesque piece of head wear you know, without
the pointy part in the back. Mine's long enough that I
can also take some of that excess fabric and tuck it
in at the back to get more of a structured look. One of the fun things about
all this is realizing just how adjustable some of the
different pieces are. You can wear the top with some
gathering or tuck it smooth. You can blouse it for a puffy
look or untuck it completely for a very relaxed vibe. You can also probably even
play around with tying knots in the excess fabric to switch up the fit and the silhouette. And then of course,
adding a belt is very nice for that fun peplum look again. But a quick tip about
this one specifically, if you make something that is almost, but not quite identical
on the front and the back, add a little bit of stitching
to the center back of the neck that made it so much
easier for me to figure out which way I'm supposed to put it on. I'm also surprisingly happy with the coat. This is definitely not my favorite color, but the black accents I
think give it a sharpness that make me like it much
more than I would otherwise. I also made a circle out of
this super sheer thin fabric that works beautifully as
a very kind of nice little jaunty scarf, or again, you
can tie it about your head to get a cute little bandana type effect. My least favorite out of
all of this, unfortunately, is the slip dress. There's something about
it that I just don't love. I think I should keep working on it. I kind of like the way it
looks better when I can't see the straps so maybe that's the issue. I tried cutting the straps
so that I could tie it a little bit higher
and I both like it more and don't at the same time. It is really dang cute
with a straw hat though. Really quick aside, I made this
half-circle vest cape thing at the last minute, and
I think I'd like to play with this more. I, it has a very fun look to it. Ha, oh my goodness gracious,
this was so stinking much fun. I, it reminds me so much of
like art classes I've taken where they give you some
kind of limitation, you know, you can only use this color
or here's some aluminum and cardboard tubes, I don't
know, make something happen. Like, there's something
so fun about working with a limitation with a
constraint that I don't know, I feel like it, it exercises
a type of like creative spot in your brain that, it's I just really, really appreciate it. This was a lot of fun, I highly recommend. I had several more ideas for
things that I want to do, including another dress
design that I think will, would work better than the
one that I tried to do, you know, and that's, that's
part of the fun as well is that I tried several
things that some worked surprisingly well and
some worked not as well. And that's okay too, but, oh my gosh, I didn't even show you guys the best part. One second, so if you
take a quarter circle and sew the straight edges together, you get a gnome hat, which is very cute. It's very silly, but it's very cute. Also, if you make it out
of like a looser fabric, then you get kind of like
a, what was his name, Mr. Smee, I think, in Peter Pan. Did he have a kind of
like a pointy floppy hat? Maybe I'm thinking somebody
else, but anyways, yeah. It's fun, like, I feel like
an even floppier material might be even better for
like maximum, you know, Mr. Scrooge lounging about
his house sort of vibes. Yeah. Yes, highly recommend you
guys try something similar, you know, find something
that you have to work around in order to make things,
see what you come up with. Anyhoodle, thanks again to
Skillshare for sponsoring this video and thank you guys
for watching, see you later.
