Saturday, August 18, 2012

WAIT! I can use that!

I have a fabric addiction...

It's not just shopping for fabric online or in stores, although that's bad enough, but I've started to see potential fabric everywhere!  For example, once upon a time my mom was going to donate a beautiful white eyelet bed skirt...well, she donated it... to me!  Then, the other day I made an old pair of jeans into shorts, and the leg remainders could not be thrown away.  No, into the fabric scrap box they went! 




Well, the bed skirt and the jean legs just sat there, crammed into the box until today when I turned them into this!







So, are you ready to make your own? 

Materials:
-Two jean pant legs
-1/2 yard of accent fabric (I'm assuming most of you don't have this particular bed skirt :) so any bed skirt or accent fabric will do, and they do sell eyelet fabric in stores)
-1/2" elastic
-thread

This pattern makes a skirt size 18-24 months.

To get started, you need to cut the jean legs open along the side seams, and remove the hemline.


 The jeans were wrinkled from wear, so after I cut them apart, I ironed them.  You should end up with two pieces that look like this.


 Now you need to cut both pieces into rectangles.  I simply taped two pieces of printer paper together to use as a guideline.


Once you have two identical jean pieces, lay them together with right sides facing and pin along the short edge.  Sew along the edge using a 1/4" seam allowance and finish with a serge or zig zag stitch.  (you can leave the edge raw, but denim will fray and you may get excess strings after washing)



Go ahead and zig zag or serge both of the long edges of the denim at this point as well.


Now it's time to cut your lining piece.  Lay the denim piece out flat across your accent fabric.  Determine how much of the accent fabric you want to hang below the denim, and cut accordingly.  The denim portion of my skirt was about 8 1/2" by 41" so my accent piece ended up being 10 1/2" by 41".

Now, making sure that the right sides of both the denim and the accent fabric are facing the table, pin the pieces together and sew along the top edge with a 1/2" seam allowance.  Don't forget to finish the edge as well.



Ok, now you're ready to sew the short edges together.  Fold the piece in half (hamburger style) with right sides facing, pin, making sure to catch all of the layers.


The finished edge should look like this.



Hang in there, we're almost done! 
Now fold down the waist band enough to accommodate you elastic, I used 1/2" elastic, so I folded down about an inch, and press.  (Make sure you measure the waist of the child who will be wearing the skirt to get an accurate elastic size, and don't forget to add an inch to that so you can overlap it and sew it together later!)


Sew along the edge of the waist band, making sure to leave a 2" gap at the end for inserting the elastic!


Denim is very stiff, so I used a safety pin to slide the elastic through, but I also pinned the end of the elastic to the opening to keep it from pulling through as I went.



Once you have the elastic through, overlap the edges and zigzag stitch them together.  Then simply sew the opening closed and you're done! 


"Maybe Auntie DyDy can save me from the Mommy paparazzi"...


Nope!

1 comment:

  1. Love the flowers in her hair, too! (Where are Dy's hair flowers?!)

    ReplyDelete