I love this fun, sassy dress style! I made this cute circus style party dress for Lisa’s daughter Elle’s recent birthday:

I made a similar dress for Boo last Valentine’s day (click to see the photo shoot for the V-Graffiti dress):

The “built in” petticoat gives the bottom of the dress lots of twirl and volume. I used fabric spray paint and fabric markers to do all the graffiti:

I used my Twirl Skirt pattern but went up a few sizes since I wasn’t using stretchy material:

I cut an identical skirt out of a contrasting material but made it an inch longer for the petticoat layer:

I cut long strips 5″ wide and connected them together so it was about 8 or 9 feet long…..over twice the length of the bottom of the skirt. I folded the strip in half and sewed the top closed. Then I pulled the bobbin thread to gather the entire length:

I placed the ruffle as shown on the right side of the petticoat layer and then I sewed the ruffle to the bottom:

To create the cinching in the top layer of the dress bottom I used a ruler to mark 2 places on the seams……one 6″ above the hem and the other 4″ above the hem:

Then I used thread to sew through both my markings……

……and I tied the thread in knot underneath gathering the fabric into a bunch. I repeated this in several places around the skirt bottom.

For the top of the dress I cut about 1.5″ inches off the bottom of a tank top and added a scanned image of a vintage playing card (the same images used on the favor bags). The image was printed onto Dharma Trading’s Super Soft Transfer Paper and ironed on. I sewed the skirt bottom to the tank.

To embellish the skirt further I sewed polka dot ribbon and crochet trim on top of the gathered areas:

The finished dress!

Click on image below for more circus party posts!