Christmas Velvet Skirt

Who doesn’t love YARN? There are so many different textures, colors, fiber to choose from, no way we can go wrong with yarn! Speaking of textures, this year Yarnspirations released Bernat Velvet yarn, and while I loved the texture, and the play of light on the yarn, it wasn’t until I saw Emily of make.e make a little girls pinafore dress that my heart sang for this yarn.

 

I just knew that this year my Christmas me made skirt had to be in this yarn! Really, I just wanted a pinafore dress but they only had two balls of this yarn available and hips and derriere were just not going to make is possible to get a pinafore out of two balls of yarn, no matter how generous the yardage. So I went with the skirt option.

If you follow me on Instagram, in my profile I have saved the stories I filmed for this skirt, they include all the making of this skirt, from waistband onwards.

To make this skirt I used 2 full balls of Bernat Velvet and a 5mm hook, just as Emily recommended. I first cut a piece of elastic as wide as my waist. I used a 3″ elastic cut to 27.5″, joined the ends then sewed them using a 5/8 ” seam allowance.

Using a foundation hdc (US, htr UK) of 17 stitches I started to crochet in rows until I had a piece of crochet that could stretch to cover the elastic. Then I folded the crochet in half over the elastic and joined with single crochets all the way around.

If you look closely at the picture above, you will be able to see the seam where I joined the two ends of the crochet to fully encase the elastic band. This was done after the crochet was folded in half and seamed with slip stitches.

I used 70 single crochets to seam the fabric together. These 70 single crochets marked the first round of our skirt proper. I then proceeded to increase in every round until round 4. I started my increases with 1 hdc in the first two single crochets, increase in the following single crochet. This means that for the second round I started with 1 hdc in the first 3 stitches and then increased.

For round 5, I hdc’ed all the way around the skirt. For rounds 6 -8, I continued increasing, rounds 9 on, I made a hdc in each stitch around until I ran out of both balls of yarn (29 rows for me). I had a total of 230 stitches.

Increasing in every round produced a ruffle skirt as opposed to the A line silhouette of increasing in every other round.

If I ever make another skirt like this again, who am I kidding? I probably will, I will choose at most a 2″ elastic to use as my waistband. But overall, I couldn’t be more exited to use this skirt on Christmas day!

I mean, just look at the texture!

YARN REVIEW!

Did I mention I loved working with the yarn? Because I totally did! It was beautifully soft to work with, and even working with it with a smaller hook than was recommended did not produce a tight unyielding fabric. Moreover, I did not have any problems with the yarn getting caught.

No matter how much I loved working with this yarn, I have to admit that there were a few cons. In each ball I found 1 knot to hold the yarn together, depending on the yarn and fabric I want, I will sometimes work over the knot and not bother (hehehe). You cannot do that with this yarn, just by pulling a little bit on the ends of the knot, I was able to unravel it, which makes me doubt a bit the security of my woven in ends. The yarn does recommend hand washing only, so I shall get back to you after I have worn this skirt several times.

Have you guys used Bernat Velvet? Le me know what you thought of it in the comments below!

Thank you for reading.

 

XOXOXO

Clarisabeth