Roma Lavinia skirt in knitting and sewing techniques
Round knitted skirt with a central fabric made ruffle
I know I ought to be politically correct and say I love music of the Roma people, and not Gypsy music. Nevertheless, for me, the word Gypsy doesn’t have an offensive connotation, the meaning of insult, or mock. To me, this old, but newly forbidden adjective represents something beautiful, colorful, joyful, and at the same time it reveals a profoundly sad, roaming, yet feisty, suffering soul which, for centuries, has been creating astonishing melodies, and bringing all of the above into a unique whole.
Besides this fiery music genre, I also like the Romany-like clothing style. I tend to wear colorful clothes with bright red shades rather than peaceful plain garments. Therefore, I wish to present my version of a flare skirt, inspired by a knit skirt from a Russian magazine Журнал МОД 551
Original skirt from the magazine Журнал МОД 551
The original skirt is an entirely knitted piece. However, I made my version of the skirt by combining 2 techniques: knitting in rounds and sewing. The ruffle in the middle, in plain burgundy colour, is a leftover piece of plush fabric, normally used for redecorating furniture. The other sections of the skirt are knitted in rounds on circular needles.
level
For making this skirt you should be familiar with basic operations on your sewing machine, knitting in the rounds and adding stitches.
material
You don’t have to buy material especially for this skirt, but you can use your leftover yarn or thread of different thickness and composition, all selected in your favorite colors. In total you’ll need between 600 and 800 gr of yarn depending on your size and yarn selection.
You will also need:
- A piece of fabric in rectangular shape 240 cm x 18 cm (1 yrd x 7 in)
- 3 circular needles No. 4.5 (or one about 2 m long)
- Crochet hook 4.5 mm
- 6 wooden or plastic beads for the drawstring
- Sewing machine
- Scissors
- Needle and thread for machine stitching
- Needle and thread for hand sewing
Apart from the above mentioned small (and big) balls of yarn of cotton, wool, viscose, blend, etc, you’ll also need strong nerves, because not everyone can complete such a project. It’s not necessary to have special skills and high knowledge in knitting, but to be able to make this skirt you’ll have to be a bit crazy, persistent, bored, and above all, to love good old Ođila band which will give you extra drive… I recommend knitting, sewing and listening to: Ciganočka (which I’m sharing here with you), Solniško, Progeja, Jehal Cigan…
size
Suitable for all sizes
Directions In A Nutshell
To make this skirt, you should first take your waist and hip measurements and according to your hip measure, cast on a corresponding number of stitches. Make sure you have an even number of stitches. Then you knit Sections 1 and 2 in the width of your hips. Section 3 is a gathered rectangular piece of fabric, whose upper edge is wider than the bottom edge of Section 2, and it is sewn onto it by gathering. From hips down Sections 3, 4 and 5 have larger circumference than each previous section. In that way you get ruffles and a huge number of stitches on your needles. However, the work goes pretty fast because the colors are altered every 5 – 15 cm, and you knit all stitches.
The exception are lace borders between every section. Their numbers of stitches are the same as the knit-stitch sections. Lace borders are a nice transition between monotonous parts made with knit stitches only. You can download full instructions for the Roma Lavinia Skirt by clicking the button below.
Personal Touch
As I already said, the original suffered some changes. It’s not just leftover yarn that clutters my living and working space. Because I love sewing too, scraps of fabric have also taken a significant place in my stash. So, since there is a lot of unused sewing material, why not play with your imagination and insert a fabric ruffle in the knitted segments of the skirt? 🙂 Frankly, once the work started widening in rocket speed, I thought it would last forever, so, among other reasons, I decided to place a piece of fabric instead of Section 3 to speed up the process. Besides, I probably wouldn’t have had enough yarn for this ruffle. The material I used was a rest of some plush decor fabric, normally used for furniture redecoration. With its soft glow it gave brightness to the whole composition knitted in pale pink and dim rose shades. It also matched perfectly with the shimmering red cotton blend yarn which I used for the lace borders. This unusual, but in my opinion successful combination of wool, cotton, shimmering, blend yarn and plush fabric, gives my variation of the skirt more of a glamorous and dazzling look. On the other hand, the melange sections soften the striking glitzy parts of it with the color as well as with their winter texture.
How I Handled An Enormous Number Of Stitches
When my work significantly widened up, my needles were just too short to hold such a large number of stitches. They, actually, were on the needles but it was very difficult to move them towards the working needle, and it was almost impossible to knit. Needles to say how much effort was needed to put to complete every round. Here’s how wide the skirt really is – the plush fabric ruffle is almost a full circle, while the last two ruffles are wider than the full circle.
I have been following numerous websites which deal with knitting, as well as knitting tools and supplies, and I read somewhere that there are very long needles. However, in Belgrade it is absolutely impossible to find anything longer than 100 cm (even that is a miracle), let alone something longer than a meter because I needed a circular needle of at least 150 cm in length.
In a shop I heard they had needles like that, they were sold out! I was prepared to pay 7-8 times more expensive needles but, alas! No, and no! I wrecked my brain for days about what to do and where to get them. I even thought I could try making a pair of my own (I got an explanation from a knitter who made her own long circular knitting needles), but suddenly I got an epiphany – double pointed needle for making socks!!! Just like you use 4 or 5 needles and knit stitches on each side with a different one, you can use circular needles in the same way. 🙂
And so I went to my favorite cheap store and bought 2 more circular knitting needles 80 cm long in the same number as the ones I already owned. So now I had 3 pairs of needles of 80 cm in length = 240 cm!!! Two of those needles held the stitches, while I used the third one as a working needle. The stitches settled in so nicely! Oh, how happy was I! And proud too! I’m sure I wasn’t the first person who came up with such a solution, but I did get to it by myself! I managed to finish the ruffles with no problems, and the number of stitches in the last round was 960! Great success, I’d say!
At the end of my knitting process I inserted a crocheted drawstring through the first lace border made and attached 3 pink and red beads on each end.
Final Thought
If you have enough imagination and a creative spirit, your skirt can be very different and one of a kind, thanks to the selection of other colors as well as different textures and stitches and fibers. If you’re not a very skilled knitter, you can also crochet a skirt like this in your favorite stitch. Any combination will create a new and unique piece that only you will posses!
An interesting fact is that my skirt weighs 900 gr!