Tutu Tutorial! Easy to do yourself!

About a week ago I made my daughter her very first tutu.  It turned out beautifully and was so easy!  I want to share with you exactly how I did it and how you can do it, too!

Do It Yourself (DIY)

Tutu Tutorial!

Supplies:

• 1/2" to 1" elastic
• Sewing machine or needle and thread
• A few yards of tulle (varies depending upon desired size, length, and fullness of tutu).  I like to use the 6 inch spools for ease of cutting.
• Scissors

Optional Supplies:

• Cardboard for wrapping and cutting
• 2 rubberbands
• A few yards of 1/2" to 1" ribbon for wrapped waist

Step 1:  Measure the waist of the tutu wearer-to-be.

Step 2:  Cut a piece of elastic slightly smaller than your waist measurement.  Overlap the ends and sew by hand or with a machine.  I recommend making your elastic waist a bit smaller than your measurement if you want the tutu to be nice and full.  The tighter the knots, the more the elastic is stretched while tying, the larger the waist becomes.

Step 3: Measure and wrap your tulle.  The easiest way to do this is to cut a cardboard template twice the length of your desired tutu length.  If you want your tutu to be 9 inches in length, make your cardboard template 18 inches long.  I wanted my tutu to be 7 inches long, so I made my template 14 inches long.  It needs to be a few inches wide- this is not picky, just wide enough to wrap the tulle around quite a few times.  If you don't want to make a template, you can can your tulle by measuring each strip.  For my tutu, I wrapped each of my two colors all the way around my template 20 times.  This gave me 40 strips of each color for a total of 80.  This was about perfect for a pretty full 6 month size tutu.

Step 4: Cut your tulle.  Place a rubber band around each end of your template and wrapped tulle to hold it in place.  Then carefully slide a scissors between your template and the wrapped tulle on each end and cut.

Step 5: Begin to wrap your tulle.  I found that the easiest way to do this was to slip the waist band around my thigh so it is easy to reach and keeps it in place.  Fold tulle strip(s) in half.  Slide the folded center under the elastic.  Pull the loose ends through the loop and pull tight.  

Try to keep the knots all at once side of the elastic.  For a fuller tutu, make your knots tight and close together.  For a lighter look, make looser knots and don't push them too close together.

Step 6 (optional): Wrap ribbon around the waist band between every few knots,, or as desired.  Tie both ends of the ribbon in a pretty bow!

Step 7:  Oooh and ahhh about the beautiful job you did and take a lot of pictures of your cutie in her new tutu!

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