Making Skirts out of Shirts

Hello! Today on Simply Saturday we’ll be talking about making skirts out of shirts. Let’s get started!

Well, in this case, it’s not a shirt, it’s the top part of a dress that was cut down into a dress and–you get the idea. And it’s not a skirt for myself, but for my two-year-old niece. I made another one for my four-year-old niece, using the same technique. Before I started, I took out the side seams and laid out the fabric.

Making Skirts out of Shirts:

I continued by making a pattern using my niece’s waist measurement and waist-to-knee measurement. If I had done this more recently, I would have curved the bottom edge of the pattern slightly. It didn’t matter too much, since I was hemming it and could make it straight then, but it would have been a little less hassle.

As you can probably tell, I didn’t actually cut the pattern on the fold. I didn’t have enough fabric for that, so the back panel ended up having a seam down the middle. That wasn’t an issue though, since most store-bought skirts are like that anyway. The front panel was cut on the fold.

I then served the edges, making sure the lace pieces matched up.

And so I ended up with this.

Next was the waistband, which you may have noticed the pattern piece for earlier. I made that by cutting off the top inch or so portion of the original skirt pattern. Then I was left with the skirt panel pattern and a waistband that would fit perfectly onto it.

Then I pinned and serged the waistband onto the main skirt piece, leaving a hole in one side for the elastic.

I then inserted the elastic, which was a little smaller than the waist measurement of my niece. Next I sewed up the hole that was left after placing the elastic.

Hemming and the Finished Product:

I then hemmed the skirt, which involved a small bout of questioning as to why I ever thought I could sew anything, since obviously I didn’t know anything about it. That lasted until I realized that using tissue paper for hemming actually worked. I’m sure that won’t be the last time I’ll feel like that, however. 😉

The end result looked like this! (The floral one is the second skirt I made.) I was pretty happy with how it turned out. Plus it’s just fun to make clothes for my nieces and nephews. 🙂

That’s all for now! I hope you enjoyed this post. Do you make clothes? ~ Emily