Skirt from slacks (tutorial)

Before

After

These used to be one of my favorite pair of slacks on my hubby. When the seems around the waist and pockets started fraying I was sad until….. I saw a cute skirt in my head!!!!!

I have to add that my mom asked where I got the skirt. When I told her she had a look of astonishment as she looked the skirt up and down! I had already told her about making it just the day before but she didn’t realize that it was the one I was wearing. It was the best compliment I could have gotten!!!

I entered this at Kimba’s DIY day over at A soft place to Land

I’ve tried to write down how I did it, if you have any questions feel free to ask!!!

1. use your seem ripper to undo the outside side seems of each leg. (I did the outside of the legs because those seems were fraying a bit, and I wanted to use the inside seem as part of the skirt) Also undo the hem seam.
2. Measure how long you need your skirt to be and add about 4 inches to that number (mine was 25 inches). I measured 25 inches from the old hem seem (the bottom of the pants will become the top of the skirt) and put tick marks all along the pants and then cut it off. Now you have 2 panels that each have a front piece and back piece already sewn together. The back of the pants were naturally a little bit larger which works out perfect for the back of the skirt to fit over your bum =).
3. Next I sewed them all together to make the tube of the skirt. You can easily tell the back because it is slightly larger, at this point I marked the back middle seem just so I wouldn’t have to keep figuring it out.
4. Now I pulled it on and literally pinned the side seems to what I was wearing where the side seems should be. I then pulled the front middle seem out in front of me and measured how much excess there was, mine had 2 inches excess in the front and 3 inches in the back. I put in the darts and absolutely HATED the way it hung so I took them and out and simply took in the front and back seems starting with 1 1/2 inches and gradually meeting up with the existing seem. Then I did the same on the right side starting with 1 inch. ( I did the left side when I did the zipper) ( See how the seem is bigger at the top? I didn’t cut off the excess because the edges were already surged to prevent fraying.)(Here you can see that is is just a flat front with out any pleats in it.)
5. Now I needed to make an opening for the zipper. I chose the left side of the skirt and unpicked about 6-7 inches for the zipper opening. Remember that that is still one of the original seems of the pants so we are not undoing any sewing that we have done so far. I simply followed the instructions on my zipper package, To this day Zippers still scare me, I don’t know why, they aren’t that scary once you get started. Just remember to take in any remaining inches that you need to (I forgot to do this and had to do my zipper twice)
6. Once your zipper is in use the remaining pieces of the pants and make a facing. I’m sorry I don’t have a picture of what my cut out piece looked like before I sewed it on, but you can see it in the picture above. Then simply sew the facing to your skirt, iron the seem and hand stitch the facing to the zipper. Do what ever top stitching you want or even simply stitch the facing to your seem allowance on the inside of you don’t want any top stitching at all ( I hope that made sense.)
1. Remember to finish off the edges of your facing piece. I always hate doing stay stitching (I don’t have a surger) but always regret it when I don’t. I think the hem and facing are the only places I had to do it on this project because all the other seems were still done from the slacks.
7. Next I hemmed it up and added top stitching to the front and back seem and to the hem and the top of the skirt.

Okay now if anyone is still reading this please tell me which shoes you lie best. You know how men are…. ;-)