A Little bit of Sunshine Skirt

Do you know what happens when you have fabric stash that's just getting to large to fit where it belongs?  You start making clothes, even though you don't particularly like making clothes.  Especially clothes that aren't particularly special and you could probably buy said clothes for almost the same amount of money.

But you make said clothes because 1) using the fabric would make one small step towards bringing order to the craft room again, 2) it provides an excuse to buy even more fabric and 3) the idea of back to school shopping with two wild monkeys is perhaps even less appealing than making clothing. Please tell me I'm not alone in this?

I've made a couple of skirts lately that I'll be blogging about over the next few weeks.  This skirt was actually a really cheap and inexpensive one because it came from an old shirt from my hubby. (My hubby always seems to get holes in the elbows of his dress shirts....does this happen to anyone else?)

I throw any clothes that might have salvageable fabric into a big bag in a closet, promising that I'll use it sometime.  Well, some of those clothes have been sitting in there for years now...so it was time to finally make something with one of them.

Do you need a sunshine shirt in your life?  Lu loves the new addition to her wardrobe!


As I mentioned before, the main part of the skirt comes from the bottom of a men's dress shirt. The waist band just comes from the top of the back of the shirt (not shown).

This shirt has a flat front and an elastic waistband for the back.  You need to cut two pieces for the front and back waistbands.  The second piece is shorter, as it's just the length of the front of my daughter.  It doesn't have elastic.  The second piece has elastic so it scrunches up to be about the size of the front piece.  Here are all the pieces cut from the skirt:

First I began by adding a white strip of fabric to the bottom of the main piece of the skirt:

I embroidered on a felt sun.

Now for the waist band.  I gauged the amount of the elastic needed by cutting it slightly smaller than half of my daughter's waist circumference. I folded the waist band over, making a passage way for the elastic.

I threaded the elastic through.

I secured the elastic on each end of the tube by sewing each end through the elastic.

I folded the front waistband over and sewed it in a similar fashion, until I had both sides of the waistband.

Placing right sides together, sew the front and back waistbands to each other.

Gather up the base of the skirt:

Place the waist band against the skirt bottom, placing right sides together.  Pin and sew around the entire opening.

Tada!  All finished!  What do you think?

If you like this post, you might like these other clothing posts:
                        Legwarmers from old leggings:             Granny Wolf Shirt:

            

                           Reversible PJ pants:                              Simple Ruffle Skirt: