Lily's Valentine Tutu

My niece, Lily, wanted me to make her a tutu for her birthday. She picked the tulle in January when I was making her sister's birthday present. She chose glittery white, pink and red because she's a Valentine's baby. She also chose some matching socks for me to make into leg warmers.

The other tutu tutorial I used attached to a shirt to make a dress, so I needed something different. I wanted something full like a pettiskirt and I found this yesterday, but I didn't have the right material. The only tutorials I could find were no-sew and it just wasn't the style I was looking for. So I modified the dress and made my own tutorial!
Materials I used: tulle, elastic, thread, pins and sewing machine, ribbon is optional

The amount of tulle you need depends on what you want. The more you use, the fuller the tutu will be. I think I used close to 3 yards. 

First, I cut all the colors lengthwise. So I had 6 pieces. I'm all about saving time and experimenting, so I decided to sew 3 together at a time to make 2 panels.

Next, I used a basting stitch to sew the colors together. Do not back stitch or you will not be able to do the next step! I overlapped the 2 panels about an inch, so I had one long panel.

Start pulling one of the threads so the fabric gathers/ bunches up. It can be as tight or as loose as you want, just be sure when you make it into a circle that it will fit your elastic.

(I apologize for giving you the finger in the picture... lol!)

Measure your elastic (or guess and hope for the best, like me), overlap the two ends and sew them together.

Pin the tulle to your elastic and attach using a zig-zag stitch. A zig-zag stitch allows more stretch than a straight stitch.

At this point, I decided the dress was too plain for my fancy Lily. The white was about 4" shorter than the pink and the red, so I cut them all to be the same length. I used the extra to make a shorter layer on top.

I followed the same steps- baste, gather, and attach to the elastic with a zig-zag stitch. I should have pinned both layers and sewed them on at the same time because I lost some more stretch to the elastic.

Lily picked a red ribbon to go with it, but I haven't added it yet. I wanted to see what she had in mind. I will try to get her to model so I can post the results.