the skirt, formerly known as pants

I wanted skirts for summer. Rather than start from scratch I went back to converting pants into skirts.

Now we have all seen the instructions for a standard jean skirt…

I found some more instructions online to do something like this…

But I didn’t want the raggedy edges or the crotch “swoosh”. I decided to deconstruct most of the jeans. I took off the waistband (this is only necessary if the jeans are too big in the waist), ripped the inseam open (I did this carefully so I could save the topstitching thread so I wouldn’t have to buy more. Seriously, there is a whole lot of thread that can be reused, and I didn’t feel like driving all over town to match the thread.), ripped open the center back seam (I separated mine completely to cut out the excess fabric) and the center front seam to the zipper.

Once everything was apart. I used a the back panel from a skirt pattern as a reference point. I lined up the center back of the jeans with the center back of the pattern. The jeans had suffered a massive blow out in the crotch so I needed to remove that fabric. I decided to go with a triangular insert. I figured out the angle for the triangle insert and marked it on the pattern and cut it out. The marked up pattern piece comes in handy when making the left and right sides of the back match up.

The hardest part was setting the triangular inserts with seams. It can be done, it just involves patience and marking the point where you need to pivot on. Once the triangle inserts were in, I serged the raw edges on the inside and the hem. I re-topstitched everything with my spool of salvaged thread.

Here is the end result.

and here is the quick and dirty version of the tutorial. I will make an attempt to photograph the process as I go during the next round.