DIY Circle Skirt with Pockets

Circle skirts are one of the easiest patterns to flat-draft, which means you can make the pattern flat on your table instead of draping it on a dress form. Let me show you how to make your own pattern, including how to add pockets with a side zipper! Watch the video below or continue reading for the same information 🙂

We’ll need a few measurements to get started. First your waist measurement for where you want it to sit. I like my skirts to sit on my natural waist, but you can have it sit low on your hips or anywhere in between if you want.

Then we need a finished length, again personal preference here. Hold the tape measure where you want the waistband to sit. If you bend down to see where you want the skirt to end, you’re going to get the wrong measurement. Instead, hold the tape against your thigh like the image below so it doesn’t move with you, and then check for the length.

Now we’ll do some light math. A circle skirt is literally a circle, with a little circle in the middle for your waist. So we have the circumference of the little circle, your waist measurement, but what we really need is the radius, or half of the diameter.

The circumference, which is your waist measurement, equals pi times the diameter. So to find the diameter, divide your waist measurement by pi, which is close enough to 3.14 for our purposes. Now you have the diameter of the waist opening. Divide that by two, or fold your tape measure in half, and you have the radius. Round that up to the nearest 1/8” so you can find it on a tape measure.

So now let’s get some pattern paper. Draw a long line across your pattern paper, perpendicular to the straight edge which will be the center front and center back of our skirts. Measure out from the corner and mark the radius length every inch or so and draw in the curve.

This will be the waist edge, and one-quarter of the skirt. Now let’s draw the skirt bottom edge. Measure out the length and mark every few inches, and then smooth it out.

Now let’s add seam allowance. We need 1/2” at the waist, 1/2” at the hem, and 1/2” on one side only.

The side without seam allowance is the center front and back, which will be cut on the fold. You could easily add seam allowance to this edge and make a center back seam. I don’t want to break up the design on my fabric with a seam, so side-zip it shall be.

I don’t ever want a skirt without pockets so let’s make a pattern for those too while we’re here. Trace out the side seam and part of the waist onto a new piece of pattern paper.

Check on your body where would be comfortable for the pocket to be based on where your skirt is going to sit. I’m going with 2” below the waistband. So I marked that and then put my hand in it. I’m drawing from the side seam, around my hand, and back up into the waistband. Use a curved ruler to smooth the curve. I also gave it about a quarter inch extra for seam allowance.

You don’t have to extend the pocket into the waistband, but it does keep it facing the front of the skirt better. Now I’m placing my hand over the pocket opening and giving it a mark where it’s large enough for my hand to get in and out of there comfortably. 5.5” should be plenty. Notch the skirt side seam and pocket bags together to indicate the opening.

We need one more pattern piece – the waistband. Draw out a long line and mark it at your waist measurement from earlier plus 2”. That gives us a half inch of seam allowance at each end, and one inch of cross over for the closure. The waistband height is up to you. I’m going to go with one inch, so folded over that would be two inches, plus a half-inch on each side for seam allowance brings me to 3”. So I’m marking along with waistband at 3” and drawing the line.

I can also mark 1.5” inches from one side to indicate where the skirt should end, and mark the half-way point between the ends for the other side seam. Then mark the half-way points again to indicate the center front and center back.

Alright, we are ready to cut.

I’ll start with my lining. Before I cut I like to spread the fabric and quickly lay the pattern out to make sure I have enough. On slippery fabrics I like to pin the straight edges together to make it easier to cut on the fold.

My main fabric is a flocked mesh, so it’s a mesh base that had a layer of adhesive applied, and then little bitty fibers applied to the glue, usually using an electrostatic charge to make them stand on end. It’s like the poor man’s velvet burnout.

I got this fabric a few years ago at Joanns, so hopefully with the Halloween season upon us they’ll be restocking it soon. It’s already printed to be a circle skirt (actually I think it was supposed to be a cape, oh well!), I’ll just leave about 1/2” of mesh on the sides, and cut the waist following the printed kind-of circle. I walked the measuring tape in a few places to find the right place to cut to give me the right size. At the hem I’m trimming it down just a little into the flocked area for a smooth edge. This fabric doesn’t fray, so I can leave the raw edge with no problem.

I have this little piece of stretch velvet with a really short pile that looks a bit like the flocking, so that will be perfect for the waistband.

For the pocket bags I’ll just use some scraps of satin.

I ran the satin and velvet through my serger to finish the edges. Sometimes the serged edge gets wavy, but a quick press with the iron and it’s nice and flat again.

If you’re using a fabric that stretches a lot on the bias you might want to stay stitch along the waistline.

Since my top fabric is sheer I want to use the pink lining as a flatlining, or underlining, for the upper part of the skirt to hide the pocket bags. Then I’ll separate the two layers under the pockets so the hems hang free. I pinned the front layers together at the waist. Then I can sew the mesh and satin together from the bottom of the pocket bag, around the waist, and down to the end of the other pocket bag.

I want the zipper on my right side (for some reason…usually it goes on the left, I don’t know what I was thinking when I made this???), so I’ll put in ONLY the left pocket first. I have my front and back piece, and I’ll pin the pocket bag on so the satin is face-down, which will mean the inside of the pocket is satin.

Sew the bags onto the skirt sides at about 3/8” and then press them toward the pocket. Then line up the left side seam and sew at 1/2” from the waistband to the first notch, backtack, then backtack again at the lower notch and sew to the bottom of the pocket bag.

Press the seam open with the pocket opening butted together.

Then flip the back pocket bag on top of the front pocket bag and pin it together.

Sew the pocket bag edges together at about 1/4” or right at the edge of the serging thread. I like to sew a second line of stitches right at the edge for safety.

To finish the side seam I need to snip the mesh fabric right at the end of the stitching. Now the mesh can be sewn at the side seam and hang freely. I’ll sew the side seam of the pink satin now too.

I have the mesh pushed back and just the side seam of the satin on my ironing board. I press that open, then put just the mesh on the board. Always test your iron settings on scrap fabric before the actual garment.

I pressed the mesh seam open, and then trimmed it down a bit. It should disappear into the folds of the skirt, but if it really bugs me I can always use the pink satin to make a little binding to hide that seam allowance even more.

Alright, left pocket is in, now the tricky part. I need an invisible zipper on the right side. So the pocket has to be constructed completely on the front side only. Okay, it’s not really that tricky! You just have to remember to do it this way. First I need to sew the front pocket opening, and it’s going to require some snipping into the seam allowance, so I’ll go ahead and use little pieces of fusible interfacing to stabilize where I’m going to be snipping later. See the little black squares of interfacing below? They’re also on the pocket bags right over the notches.

Now I can pin the front pocket bag onto the front of the skirt, and sew just the opening from notch to notch. I’m going to sew it at about 3/8”.

Then snip the pocket bag seam allowance to the stitching, and snip the skirt about 1/8” past the stitching to maintain its 1/2” seam allowance. Press the seam open, then fold the pocket bag back and press with the front fabric folded over just a smidge, and the seam allowances above and below the opening flat.

Take the back pocket bag and line up the edge with the front skirt. Then pin the pocket bags together and sew along the edge twice.

Now we have a complete pocket on the front skirt panel!

Grab an invisible zipper and unzip it. From the back side, roll out the teeth and press it flat.

Then pin it to the front seam allowance, being sure not to pin the pocket opening closed. Use an invisible zipper foot to sew the zipper in place. Try to get as close to the opening as you can without actually sewing it closed.

Close the zipper and mark on the other side of the tape anything to help line it up, like the pocket opening or, for me, where the spiderweb flocking should meet. Then pin the zipper to the back side and sew it down. Change the foot on your machine to a zipper foot and get right up next to the zipper stitch line. Keep the side seams aligned and sew the side seam down to the pocket bag like on the other side.

If you’d like more clarification on sewing an invisible zipper, see this post.

I snipped into the seam allowance of the mesh fabric so I can separate it from the lining like I did on the other side seam. I pinned the mesh and stitched it at 1/2”. Then pushed it out of the way and stitched the satin side seam right up to the other stitch line.

Press them open separately like before, and trim the mesh seam allowance. Press the zipper and pocket opening too.

I tried the skirt on at this point and pinned the pocket bags where I wanted them to fall. With the edge of the pocket bag pinned up like this it will sit closer to my body and not flare out like the skirt does. Then I sewed it down and trimmed it.

Now let’s prepare the waistband. Usually I would give it some interfacing to stiffen it up so it doesn’t roll, but I really like that this is stretchy. So I’m just going to put interfacing for about 2” on the ends where the closure will be.

Then I like to press the waistband in half. This will make it easier to finish after it’s sewn to the skirt. Velvet should be pressed with either a velvet pressing board or a towel to protect the pile, which is the little fibers that stick up. But the pile of this velvet is so short the iron has almost no effect on it, so I just press lightly without letting the full weight of the iron sit on it.

Match up the notches for the center front and back and side seams. The edges by the zipper should be pinned with the 1/2” seam allowance on the front side, and 1.5” seam allowance on the back side.

I roll the zipper back a little when I sew it to the waistband so that the teeth are covered. Sew the rest of the waistband to the skirt, and check to make sure it lines up when it’s zipped.

To finish the waistband ends, from the inside of the waistband I’m folding both seam allowances up and marking the 1/2” stitch line on the front side. For the back side I’m leaving both seam allowances flat, and marking the stitch line.

Sew those edges as close to the skirt and zipper as you can without sewing into them.

Then snip the corners and extra bulk, but not so much that it’s going to fall apart on you. Also snip along the curve of the skirt so it can relax and not pucker up the waistband. I also graded the skirt waist down.

Now you can stitch in the ditch, which is sewing a stitch inside of a seam that makes it practically invisible, and catch the inner seam allowance of the waistband. Or you can roll the edge up and hand sew along the inside for a cleaner finish, which is what I’m going to do.

See how pressing the waistband in half comes in handy now? Just pin it in half, and then fold up the inside of the waistband to meet the stitching of the front, pin it in place, and sew it down to the stitching of the outer waistband seam.

You can add the closure of your choice, like a button or snap, or my favorite, a skirt hook.

The only thing left now is the hem. Since this is just a giant circle, there are going to be parts of the skirt that are on the bias. As we know the bias of most fabrics is stretchy and tends to grow. So we want to get all of the growth out of the bias before hemming.

The hem is uneven because the bias is stretching under gravity

So let’s make hem weights! You’ll need some kind of ribbon or twill tape and a lot of pennies. I’m using this 1.25” twill tape. I cut it 2.5” long, folded it in half, and sewed two sides. Then I put three pennies in it, and sew the top closed.

Make a bunch of these, then you can either sew them onto a long piece of ribbon or twill tape, or you can pin them directly to your garment, which is what I’m going to do. I pinned them along the hem about 4” apart. It took 23 weights to do the front, and you might need more or less depending on how long your skirt is. Hang it up or put it on a dress form overnight to let the weights do their thing.

In the morning take the weights off and let the skirt relax for another hour or so.

Make sure the skirt is hanging evenly on a hanger or a dress form, and then find the shortest spot in the hem to match the rest to. For a normal skirt it would probably be the center front and back, which are on the straight grain. But for me I’ve decided to match the length to the shortest part of this spiderweb, so I’m going to cut off quite a bit. An L ruler comes in really handy for this part, but you can also use a tape measure or a yard stick. Measure up from the ground and mark your measurement with pins all the way around the skirt. Mark them only a few inches apart so you get the right curve.

Then spread it on your table and mark where the pins are. Remove the pins and then draw out the new hem line with a curved ruler. Then cut the revised curve.