Luella Skirt by Tilly & The Buttons - Pattern Review

If you’re looking for a new skirt to sew this summer, then look no further than the Luella Skirt from Tilly & The Buttons.  Luella is a tiered and gathered skirt with an elasticated waist and is the perfect floaty, summery dress for the lovely sunny weather we’re having in the UK at the moment.

I’ve made three versions so far and I’m not ruling out a fourth!  I really like this pattern – it's beginner friendly and if you’ve been sewing a while it’s a really quick, straight forward project that you will likely pull together in an afternoon.

Luella Skirt - Fabric Choices

Fabric suggestions on the pattern envelope are light to medium weight woven materials that gather easily like cotton lawn, poplin, double gauze, seersucker, linen blends, viscose (rayon), or crêpe.  I made my first version out of a beautiful floral linen blend which has a lovely ‘heavy’ drape to it and it barely creases which is a dream. (purchased from the craft section of the City Cycle Centre in Ely) The version I made for my Mum was made from a cotton viscose in a yellow floral design and this one was slightly more lighter weight than the first (bought from The Remnant House in Harrogate).  The third version I made was from a blue and white striped cotton seersucker.  This was a much ‘crisper’ fabric than the first two and so gives a bit more of a structured look and does crease quite a bit (also bought from The Remnant House).  All three fabrics made up into great skirts that are comfortable to wear.

Luella Skirt - Fitting and Alterations

Fit wise Luella is extremely easy as the only fitted part is the elasticated waistband.  The instructions suggest that you take your waist measurement and subtract 10% but that worked out to be a bit tight for me, so instead I just took the elastic and put it round my waist and decided on what felt comfortable. 

In terms of length, I am around 5’3” so I took three inches off the total length of the maxi version skirt.  To balance out that alteration I took 1.5 inches off the first tier and 1.5 inches off the second tier, rather than taking the whole 3 inches off in one area.

Having looked at the pictures on the pattern envelope and also reviewed the size of the actual pattern pieces, I was thinking that the volume in the skirt may be slightly too much for me.  I do like the tiered and gathered style but I think that too much volume can overwhelm my frame.  This combined with the fact that I only had two meters of my first linen blend fabric meant that I made some adjustments to the width of the tiers. 

I will be honest here and say that because this involved some maths, I did enlist my partner to help!  We worked out that the size of the original pattern tiers each increased by two thirds.  So to reduce them but still retain a good balance, we halved the increase to one third.  So the width of each one went from 42”, 64” and 106.5” to 42”, 56” and 74.5” – this brought down the volume of the second and third tiers and meant that I only needed two panels on the third tier instead of three and therefore could fit it into two meters of fabric.

The pattern recommends that you use two inch wide elastic for the waistband but I didn’t have any of that size so I used what I had in instead.  The waistband pattern piece has been drafted to fit the two inch dimensions so I needed to reduce it down to fit my elastic width.  To do this, I folded the waistband pattern piece in half as it would be on the skirt, placed my elastic on top where it would sit inside (in line with the folded edge), measured down from the bottom of the elastic by approximately three quarters of an inch (5/8ths to retain the seam allowance plus an extra 8^th or so for some wriggle room) and then drew a horizontal line across the waistband at that level and cut down that line to trim off the excess (on both layers of the pattern).  I then had a waistband which would match the width of elastic I was using.

Luella Skirt - Sewing

Tilly & The Buttons rate Luella as a ‘confident beginner’ pattern and I would agree.  The instructions are very clear and it’s a really quick pattern to pull together.  If you are a beginner, the trickiest parts are probably the gathering and making sure that it is even. Sewing the exposed frill onto the previous tier can also be difficult because at this step, the needleplate on your sewing machine will be completely covered by the skirt fabric, so you can’t use it to keep to the 5/8ths seam allowance.  I started off by using my seam gauge (ruler) to measure as I sewed and then I realised that if I sewed a few millimetres before the ¾ inch gathering line (that is still visible), that would keep me more or less at the correct seam allowance.

If you are looking for some additional support with sewing your Luella skirt, I have done my own ‘Luella Skirt Sew-Along’ on my YouTube channel - see below.  I talk through each of the steps I went through as I planned, prepared for and sewed up my blue striped version.

Luella Skirt - Style

We are seeing so many of these types of tiered and gathered skirts in the shops at the moment so it's great to be able to sew something that is so ‘on-trend’ for this year.  How you style Luella will depend on your fabric to some extent.  My floral linen version is perhaps more dressy and I have already worn it for an evening out but I would say my blue seersucker version is maybe more casual for the day time.  Both could be worn with sandals or trainers and dressed up or down.  There is no doubt though, as Tilly says on the back of the envelope pattern, this skirt is most definitely ‘made for swishing!’.