TUTU-torial

My daughter’s birthday is coming up and wanted her to look fabulous, so I decided to make her a tutu!

Making tutus are really easy. Just follow these steps.

You will need: 
Lots of 6 inch spools of Tulle in the colors that you like. For this project I used off white, light pink, purple and fuchsia.
½ inch braided elastics
Needle and thread or a sewing machine, if you have one
Large book.
Satin ribbons (this is optional, but for this project I used ½ inch old-rose colored satin ribbons)

Step 1: Measurements and the Elastic Band
Get your child’s waist measurement using the elastic band. Then take off about 2 to 3 inches from that as the elastic will stretch when you put in the tulle. Sew the edges together.

Step 2: Tulle Cutting
I measured the approximate length that I want for my daughter’s tutu, double that and cut the tulle according to that length. To illustrate, I cut about 16 inch length of tulle, for a length of about 8 inches. You need to double it when you cut the tulle because you will fold it in half when you get to tying them on the elastic band.

Step 3: Planning your Pattern
With the colors I chose, I layered three different tulle colors for one knot on the elastic. The more tulle I layer, the fluffier the tutu gets. In this case, I used three layers, layering white, light pink and purple tulle for one knot. And planned a pattern of alternating that with a three tulle layer of with white, light pink and dark pink. Then I plan on accenting the tutu by placing a satin ribbon for every 3 knots.
For this project I used a total of 24 knots. So this means I needed…

24 piecss of 16 inch tulle lengths of white

24 pieces of 16 inch tulle lengths of light pink

12 pieces of 16 inch tulle lengths of purple

12 pieces of 16 inch tulle lengths of fuchsia

8 pieces 16 inches of old rose colored satin ribbons

Step 4: Knotting
This is where the large book comes in handy. You will use this to hold your elastic. Have the elastic band wrap around the book stretching it up a bit. This will make knotting the tulle easier.
There are two ways to knot your tulle around the elastic. See the illustration.

For this project I used the first method, but used 3 layers of tulle. Keep knotting on the elastic until you finish all around it. This is actually the fun part, as this is where you see your tutu coming into life. Exciting!

Step 5: Trimming
Now I know I used 16 inches of tulle to make about an 8 inch length, but your finished tutu would have uneven edges, thus trimming edges are necessary. Take a ruler and trim the edges to about a 7 inch length. Move your ruler all round the tutu until all the edges are trimmed and even- length looking. 
Your tutu is now finished

This is what mine looked like.

Add accents to your tutu if you wish. You may hot glue some flowers on the waist band or on the tutu itself, wrap a satin ribbon around the waist band and/or make a bow. For this project though the satin ribbons were enough accents for me as I plan to have my daughter wear a headband with a flower on it and accents on her tutu might already be overkill. An important note however for using satin ribbons… to keep the edges from fraying, very quickly burn the edges of the ribbon with a lighter. It only takes a second to seam, too long and you will be having a burning mess of satin ribbon and easily combustible tulle. So be careful!