mysimplehappylife: Refashion pants into a skirt

Monday, September 12, 2011

Refashion pants into a skirt

A friend gave me a pair of white hand me down capris for my daughter. They were super wide legged and looked really funny on her so I decided to turn them into a skirt. I was wanting a white jean style skirt for her so this was perfect. This tutorial is super easy and fast. I love this for old pants, especially when the bottoms get all ripped up from dragging on the ground. I made these for my daughter but you can make them for grownups too! It's the exact same tutorial for adults!

Okay so the first thing I did was try the pants on and measure where you want the skirt to hit. Stick a pin in there and take the pants off. Add an inch for seam allowance and cut straight across the legs. It will look like a V when you do it but that is the way it should look.

Then you need to unpick the center leg hems. The pants should open up and lay mostly flat. Where the zipper center hem comes down, the pants will stick up kinda weird. So fold it over to the side and cut a little slit so the right side lays under the left side like this.

Then cut out a little section of fabric so you have a triangle centered in your skirt like this.

Now you will have a little triangle to fill in. So use a section of your pant legs you cut off and fill it in and pin it then sew around the little triangle.Make sure you fold the right side under since it doesn't have the seam on it.

Then flip your skirt over, and the back won't lay completely flat either. You will need to cut out a section of the fabric. I took the section that stuck up and laid it flat, so the back middle hem is in a straight line like this.

Then cut out a triangle right there in the middle so it looks like this.

Then fill it in with another piece of fabric from the legs you cut off. Fold both sides under this time.

Then with all your scrap pieces cut out the existing hems on them and line your triangles with the hems so they look finished off and sew down each one. So it looks something like this. Make sure you do the front of the skirt too.

Next you will want to cut off the extra fabric so the bottom of your skirt is in a curve. Then all you have left to do is hem your skirt. Sorry if it is picture over load. I like pictures because I feel like they help me explain it better.

You are done! Enjoy your new cute skirt! Send me some pics if you make any skirts I would love to see!

Look at that little face, such a tired baby! She was looking at me like mom why are you taking 500 pics of me right now. So glad I got that look on camera! Oh and sorry about the bright orange sippy cup. Sophia was tired and wouldn't go anywhere without it today.