It sounds really official and important, doesn’t it? I recently received “an important survey conducted by the Research Institute of Mother and Child Care.” In the cover letter, I read that the Institute has been conducting these surveys for over 50 years. Impressive, right? This must be important work if they’ve been doing it so long. Or not. After a bit of digging, I found this is not an independent scientific organization, it’s part of Abbott Labs, the pharmaceutical company that also happens to market Similac baby formula. Of course, that little detail wasn’t actually on the survey or the accompanying cover letter. The letter closes by saying “With your input, our research regarding infant feeding will be as complete, accurate, and useful as possible.” They just fail to mention for whom it will be useful and that they are gathering this information to better market their products.

I have a couple thoughts on this. First, shame on you, Abbott Labs, for your lack of transparency. I have no issues with market research. As a child, I enjoyed the free samples and questionnaires we received in our home because my mom participated in market research programs. Hiding your organization behind an official sounding name like “The Research Institute of Mother and Child Care”? Boo.

Second, they really need to work on their target market. Over the last few months I’ve been receiving formula samples and coupons. Then this survey arrived. The only flaw in their plan is that we do not have any babies in our house. Our youngest child turned 4 in January.

It’s hard to resist putting something heavy in this postage paid return envelope and sending it back in the mail…

The directions for this skirt make it sound very simple. There are 3 tiers to the skirt, each tier contains 3 different sized pieces. The instructions tell you to simply cut 8 of each of the largest sized pieces from at least six different fabrics. Sounds easy enough, right? Pick out some fabrics…

Then you need to trim some of the pieces to the smaller sizes so that you will make 8 panels, each containing a piece of length a, b and c AND so that the adjacent pieces are different heights. Maybe some of you out there are confident and amazing enough to simply start whacking apart those pieces and have it all come out beautifully. I will admit that I am not such a person.

First of all, when I’m tracing a pattern piece that has three different lengths, I’m going to trace it as three different pieces because if I don’t, I’m definitely going to mess it up later. No problem there, but that means there are now nine different pieces for the main part of this skirt. In addition to keeping the adjacent pieces different in size, I wanted them to be different fabrics.

I made the following chart to use when cutting pieces and then assembling the skirt:

panel —– tier	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8
1	1/b	2/c	3/a	4/c	5/b	6/c	7/b	8/a
2	4/c	5/a	8/b	7/a	1/c	3/a	2/c	6/b
3	3/a	7/b	1/c	6/b	2/a	8/b	4/a	5/c

Each part of the table has the number of a fabric and the length of the piece. For the first panel, I need to cut fabric 1 using piece 1-b, fabric 4 using piece 2-c and fabric 3 using piece 3-a. For the second panel, I’d need fabric 2 cut using piece 1-c, fabric 5 using 2-a and fabric 7 using 3-b.

Since I’m using 8 fabrics, I’ll cut 3 pieces from each fabric. I simply checked the chart to see which pattern pieces to use and then cut the three pieces from each fabric and labeled them with a Post-It note. This is fabric 1, cut with piece 1-b.

Once they were all cut, I referred to my chart again to lay all the pieces out on my table in the proper order.

Next, I stacked each panel with its pieces, so I had 8 stacks.

Since I’m using 8 fabrics, it works out conveniently and the fabric number on the pieces in the top row also correspond to the panel number. Next I assembled each panel.

Since I didn’t want to worry about mixing them up, I attached the panels to each other as I completed them. I just kept attaching them to the right side.

Now, one of the nice things about this skirt is that, unlike the usual patchwork, there is no worrying about the corners in the middle of the skirt all lining up nicely because you’ve intentionally arranged the pieces so they are different sizes. This makes putting the assembled panels together less painful. Once you have all the panels assembled and sewn together, you’ll just need to put on the waistband and bottom frill.

I wanted to use a thicker elastic, so I cut the waistband piece 3″ wide. You can see where I’ve marked the quarters so I can attach it to the skirt.

After attaching the waistband, I use my zipper foot to help me get nice and close to the edge while I topstitch around the waist.

So far, so good!

We still need that bottom ruffle, though. Since I can’t just leave things alone, I also cut the bottom ruffle at a 3″ width. I hemmed it before attaching it to the skirt so I didn’t have to deal with all the fluff when hemming. For the hem, I ran one side through the serger and then pressed it under and stitched it.

I put about 5 3/4 yards of bottom ruffle on this skirt, but it could have easily taken more. I used my ruffler set at 12 to gather the ruffles.

Press the hem

and you’re ready for the last topstitching!

It looks a little odd on the hanger, but it’s done!

This is a size 128, with 20.5″ of 1″ wide elastic.

This might be my new favorite sundress pattern. The green one I made seemed like it was a little big, so I made it again in a size 122. This time I also changed up the panels on the skirt portion, making 4 from each fabric and alternating them in twos. I think I prefer the single print version in green better, but Zoe loves them both.

And just because the first one went together so well, this one was one goof after another. I didn’t make enough binding, then I cut it wrong and had to make more! When I put the bodice together I twisted the elastic connecting piece in the back when I attached it, so I had to pick it apart and fix it. After doing that, I realized I hadn’t attached the loops for the back ties to go through. And where do they attach? Well, in the bodice seams, of course!