Lined tutu tops, the Why and How

Why use lined tutu tops?

I use lined tutu tops for almost all of my tutu dresses in my shop for the following reasons:

1. They are not see through, so they are a must for older kids.
2. They are lined with a soft and stretchy knit material, so they feel much better against the skin than the crochet tops.
3. If we start somewhere in the middle of the crochet top ( as I will show in the following tutorial) the tulle knots will come over the lining not the skin, which means they wont irritate child's skin.

I have made and sold more than five hundred tutus so far and I have learned that when it comes to customer satisfaction, its best to stick to the lined ones.

I have recently started selling lined tutu tops in my other etsy store. I'm receiving a lot of queries everyday on how to use lined tutu tops to make tutus. In the following tutorial I will explain how to do it:

12 inch Lined tutu top is probably too long for a child's bodice, so I always tie tulle at two third of its length. This will also give children some more of the knit layer beneath tulle so they are more comfortable.

I'm using ribbon instead of tulle because ribbon photographs much better than translucent tulle. You insert a tulle loop from holes in one crochet row and bring it out from the one above it. Since the holes are not exactly above each other you may need to bring the tulle loop from the hole diagonal to where you inserted it. Don't worry about it, just insert the tulle loop in the hole in one row and bring it out from the row above it.

Thread the raw ends from the loop to tie a knot. Voila! you just tied your first tulle strand to the lined crochet tutu top. Wasn't that hard, was it?

For the next strand, push the tulle in the hole next to the first one in lower row and bring it out from the hole next to the first one in the top row.

Just keep going until you complete the whole circle.

Here is the Anna Dress  made with this method.

Here you can see the extra part of the top that was hidden by tulle.

You may want to check out my store for Lined Crochet tops and Tulle Rolls.