Upcycled Men's Shirt

Skills acquired: pleating, using hem tape

I made a skirt! This is the finished product of my upcycled men's skirt. I'm particularly proud of the pleating. I finished the hem at the waist with hem tape, a substance I will wax poetic about in the future.

It's a pretty simple design, so I'm trying to think of ways to jazz it up. Contrasting waistbands, upgrading buttons, piping, ruffles. When I have more, I'll list them on Etsy!

Men's Shirt Into a Skirt

In November I bought an armful of men's shirts to turn into skirts. This project got shoved aside for Christmas, but after the recent passing of my snuggle bunny, I needed something light to distract me.

I want to maybe get more creative with some of these shirts, but the blue pattern is busy enough that I was okay sticking with a simple design. Using this tutorial for the rough idea, I sat down with some Law & Order: Criminal Intent and my seam ripper. I decided to start with the blue patterned shirt. The first step is to remove the cuffs...I hate these cuffs. They were triple stitched onto the sleeves. I was ripping them out for at least two episodes. For comparison, I removed the entire sleeve of the polka dot shirt in 15 minutes.

Sewing the waistband went rather well. I consulted some of my books, chanted "I can do this! I am awesome!" In 30 minutes, I had a beautiful waistband...that was backwards. Frustrated, I abandoned my project for the night.

The next night, I fixed the waistband and pinned the skirt in place. I felt I couldn't finished the edged and get it properly pinned, so I'm going to get some hem tape to make things neat. Finished pictures in a couple days!

Blind Hem...Sort Of

Skills acquired: Blind hem

After much consulting with my mother and my yoda about what on earth a blind hem is, I put one in a pair of jeans. (At 5'4", most of my pants need to be hemmed.) This was both a success and a failure. If these jeans were pure cotton, I think it would have gone better, but polyester blends don't iron as beautifully as cotton. Ironing a tube didn't go as well as it could have either. My hem is also too short for heels. The biggest problem, however, was that I thought I could do this without cutting off the excess fabric. Not so. They don't lay cleanly because of the extra bulk, so while my hem is perfectly blind, it needs to go on a diet. When I get a moment (please see my previous post of upcoming projects), I'll pick this out and try again.

Tulle Layers

Skills acquired: patience, profanity, respect for tulle

I, having all the patience of a three-year-old, did not want to develop sewing skills by making napkins, graduating to pillows, then practicing bags. Oh no. I want to work on clothes now, now, now! I've had a jersey, melon skirt for a couple years now that I never wear because it's Spanx or vpl. Sounds like the perfect thing to alter, no?

With my flair for the dramatic, I thought this would be a fine base layer for a neon yellow tutu. "Tulle will be great," I thought," because I wont' have to hem it!" Turns out I'm just the sort of naive mark shifty tulle lays in wait for.

I folded and trimmed this with only a tape measure as my guide. Remember what I said about shifty? le sigh. It was all sorts of uneven. I was so frustrated with it, I spent weeks just glaring at it on my dress form.

Eventually, I decided to just plow through it. I sewed the layers together, gathered them, sewed them to the skirt, sewed up the back (that part took at least three tries), and sewed on the ribbon that covers my terrible stitch work.

This is the finished product. (I think like look like one of Toulouse-Lautrec's cancan dancers and even topped the outfit with a hair feather.) Notice the lack of detail shots. It's puffy at the top, and the stitching is all over the place. The back is especially awful, so I spared you a photo. No doubt I'll want to redo this later, add more tulle -- cut properly -- and stitch straight. But for now I can say, "I made this!"