super easy carnival skirt

alex's next birthday party is going to be a carnival theme. i found this awesome fabric on spoonflower.com designed by pennycandy. the color scheme and theme are perfect. i had the fabric well before i knew what exactly i was going to make with it. the plan for alex's party is to have it at a bounce house place so she needs to be able to play and jump around a lot. i decided to make this super easy market style skirt. so i had three fabrics that i could coordinate. i cut out two big rectangles out of different fabric. the outside/top fabric piece should be 42"x12" while the inside/bottom fabric piece should be 42"x15". alex is an average sized five year old. i cut a 32.75" long piece of 1" wide elastic. for the pocket pieces: the pocket top piece should be cut at 12"x2" and the pocket piece itself should measure 7.5"x6". i put two pockets on this skirt so i cut out two sets of pocket pieces. hem the long sides of the pocket top pieces then fold in half with right sides facing to stitch together the short ends (it'll look more like a square at this point.) hem around three sides of the pocket piece itself. take the pocket top piece, turn rightside out and fold the top half inwards (in half - back to looking more of a triangle.) then with the raw top edge of the pocket piece, pin to the inside open bottom edge of the top pocket piece (it will gather a tad, or have a couple of tucks.) top stitch that line to attach the top piece of the pocket to the actual pocket piece. pin to skirt where desired and stitch to the outside rectangle piece of skirt. now to make the skirt itself. with right sides facing, stitch the short sides together for each of the large rectangle pieces. hem the bottom edge of each skirt layer - i used a serger to do the hems, but with a sewing machine just turn under and stitch. turn rightside out and fit the longer skirt section inside the outer skirt section. sew them together at the top raw edge. again, i used a serger for this, but if using a sewing machine then have the short skirt inside the longer piece (the inside piece right side facing the wrong side of the longer piece) stitch the top seam and then flip the short piece back out to the top front. now, measure down an inch and a quarter and stitch a straight light around the top of the skirt pieces together leaving open a couple inch section in the back. feed your elastic through that tunnel you just created. stitch the elastic ends together and top stitch that open section closing off that tunnel. and you're done. seriously, it's really easy even though i probably just made it sound complicated :)