I love maxi skirts. They’re comfortable, you look put together without trying too hard, and best of all, you don’t have to worry about being lady-like while wearing them – you can go about your farm chores (or go bowling…) without flashing anyone. I’ve had a hard time finding a cute casual one, so I decided to turn this pair of jeans into a super cute maxi skirt. My sewing skills are not at all great, so pretty much anyone that can turn on a sewing machine can do it. Here’s the tutorial.
You’ll Need:
- One Pair of Stretchy Jeans.
- One Yard of Fabric. A thick cotton is good, or something like a flannel would work well. Wash and dry it so it pre-shrinks.
- Sewing Machine, Thread, Pins, Seam Ripper.
1. Use a seam ripper to tear apart the inside leg seams of the jeans.
2. Fold the jeans inside out and line up the two front seams. Pin them together.
3. Use a straight edge ruler to draw a line from the zipper straight down the leg to eliminate the pointy part that’s sticking out.
4. Sew the front seams together from the zipper all the way down, following your straight line at the top, then just sew along the edge to the bottom. You should now have something that looks like this in the front:
Try it on to make sure you don’t have any weird bulges anywhere (due to crooked sewing) and touch them up. See that little awkward area right below the zipper? You can fold the material over and sew it up tighter by hand to hide that.
5. Lay the skirt right side out, back side up on a flat surface. Line up the two sides of the butt seams and fold them over to the right side. Make sure the opening of the slit lines up with the center of the front. Pin it down.
6. Sew the two layers you folded over to the back right side, sewing on top of the existing stitches.
When you get to the part that is ripped, you might want to try using a pretty stitch, like a scallop. It looked much better than my first attempt at trying to use a straight stitch, since I apparently cannot sew in a straight line:
Try it on again. You should now have an actual skirt with a slit in the back to just above your knee. You can leave it like this and call it a day if you’d like, or continue on and add the cute accent fabric.
7. Fold your accent fabric in half. Starting at the folded end, cut a slight curve in the bottom edge of the fabric. The loose ends should be about 4-5 inches shorter than the folded center.
8. Keep the fabric folded, and line up the back side of the jeans with the fabric. Match up the bottom of the jeans with the loose edges of the fabric, and angle them until the length of the open slit area is one inch away from the folded seam. Leave and inch of fabric on the cut end so you have room to fold the bottom over for a hem. Cut the fabric along the edge of the jeans, so you’ll have a pie-shaped piece of fabric now.
9. Unfold your pie-shaped piece of fabric, and pin the bottom hem, working from the center out, along your curved edge. Sew it up. If your fabric is unraveling, use a double stitch, or the scalloped stitch, along the bottom.
And now your fabric is hemmed…
10. Almost done! Line up your fabric inside the slit of the skirt with the right sides out. Starting at the bottom, overlap the jean over the fabric by about an inch and pin it all the way up. Do the same thing on the other side.
It should look like this after it’s pinned. The fabric will be bunched up – that’s OK. Just make sure it’s pinned flat along the the seams with the jeans.
11. Starting at the bottom up, sew the fabric to the jean, following the lines where the stitches used to be in the jean seams. You’ll end up with a little pleat in the fabric at the top center of the slit.
12. Turn the skirt inside-out and cut off any extra fabric that’s sticking out. DONE!! You should now have a super cute maxi skirt.
Front:
Back:
Finished: Upcycled Jeans to Maxi Skirt : )
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