Refashion Magic

This past week I made an amazing skirt...Out of an old pair of pants. It may be my best refashion project yet!

Springy, stretchy knit dance pants

It started when I got my amazing turquoise and brown striped socks for my birthday. I have a plethora of shirts and blouses that matched the turquoise stripe, but as I searched my closets I realised...I had no brown skirts! This must be remedied, thought I. I grabbed up a brown pair of pants. They were the stretchy, swingy, wide legged dance style pants. The kind that almost look like a skirt if you keep your legs close together as you wear them.

I hardly ever wore these pants; they were too short for my style, and slightly too large for my waist anyway. I thought about simply cutting the inseam apart and resewing it together skirt style but I didn't like that idea. It would be too long and the material wasn't right for a long skirt. It would make a nice knee length skirt, I thought.

Recently, I found a skirt at the thrift store that has since become my favourite skirt. It's made of the stretchy, springy nylon stuff, is an aqua green colour and has a floaty, uneven, wavy hemline. It looks like a fairy skirt. I, then knew, as I looked at my brown pants, exactly what style skirt I'd try to make.

I pose with my teapots

I cut the inseam and then cut uneven waves off the bottom of each pant leg. (I regret now that I did not take pictures of this part.) It looked good but not good enough. Just the pants, cut, cropped and resewn as a skirt didn't seem right. Not wide enough, not flared enough. It hung limply. It needed some gores. I snipped up the side of each leg and used the cut off pant legs to be large triangle style gores. I sewed them all together and voila! A really lovely skirt.

A spin shot

 It has flare and bounce and goes really well with my socks. Turns out, it also goes really well with one of my other best refashion garments: A blue striped bodice-vest I made out of an old button up collar shirt.

awesome

The lace up back on my refashioned bodice

This kind of outfit makes you feel magical. And it's perfect for Spring and Summer.

Update 5/2/11 5:30pm: While browsing one of my favourite refashion sites Refashion Co-op, I noticed they have a refashion "dress challenge" Which sounds totally awesome! And I think I'm going to try and make a dress for it. I don't get to refashioning as often as I like, but I love it and I would love to have motivation to do it more often (as if I need more clothes, haha) so I'm thinking of joining the co-op. We'll see! In the meantime, you should check out their site as it's mega cool and pretty inspiring!