Super Easy Patternless A-Line Skirt

Sometimes you just feel like a simple skirt with nice, clean lines. And you don’t have a whole lot of fabric. This easy skirt is perfect! You’ll need two times the length that you want for the skirt. (So if you want a skirt that’s 25 inches long, you’ll need 50 inches of fabric, or about 1.5 yards.)

Fold the fabric in half, with the selvages together. Then fold it again so the cut ends are together. You should have four layers of fabric, with a big fold at the top, selvages on the right, two single-layer folds on the left, and four cut ends at the bottom.

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To use even less fabric, you can use the fabric’s width as your length, then you’ll only need enough to get around your hips plus however much more you want for fullness at the hem. If you’ve decided to go this route, when you first lay your fabric out to fold it, the selvages will be at the top and bottom, with the cut ends on the right and left.

Once you’ve gotten the fabric folded, sketch out your skirt. Or, if you’re like me, live on the wild side, forgo the pen, and start with the scissors! The important part is the waist – measure your waist and add 2 inches, then divide by 4. This is the hot pink line in the drawing. The other two lines are pretty forgiving – the purple line should be as long as you want the skirt plus a few inches for the hem. The blue line just goes from the end of the purple line back to the fold.

You’ll also want to cut yourself a waistband – I like to make it about three inches wide and as long as my waist measurement plus two inches.

Now sew the two panels of your skirt together, right sides facing of course, using 1/2 inch seam allowances. Leave room on one side to add a zipper. Sew in the zipper, then sew on your waistband. Add a button or snap on the waistband. Hem. And you’re finished.

These skirts usually take me about an hour, all told.

Now, I have a very uncurvy frame. There’s about ten inches of difference between my waist at its narrowest and my hips at their fullest. If you have a curvier figure, the straight side seams of this skirt might not be flattering on you. In that case, consider cutting the side seams with a bit of a curve to match your hips like this:

I particularly like this pattern in a vertical stripe, because the way it hangs makes the stripes look like they angle in on the sides.

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