A Seamstress Cat: Recycled Maternity Skirt

About a month ago I was visiting a friend a few hours away, and she decided to give me some materials of her's to make some new clothes for myself with. One of the things she likes to do, is take her husband's worn out pairs of pants and turn them into skirts for her daughters. And she thought I might be able to make some use out of a couple pairs as well.

So I picked out two pairs of khaki colored pants, without a clue as to what I would do with them.

After a couple weeks ideas began forming in my mind, and finally I was ready to take action!

The first thing I did was to cut the legs off at the top.

Next I cut out the inside seams and opened them out to see how much flair they'd give me, as I was thinking of making tulip style skirt.

And of course, what sewing project is complete without a cat? ;-)

It turned out that the legs of the lighter pair of pants were actually narrower than the others. So, that helped with my decision on where they would be placed.

Next I started sewing them together! However, four pant legs in a row makes for a very full skirt. As you can see below. Not mention that because these are mens pants I was working with, they were quite stiff. So, I took in a total of 4 inches at the waist. I was still hoping for a tulip shape to the skirt.

Once I had the waist as narrow as I wanted it, it was time to gather it! For the maternity panel I was planning on using the same method I used in this blog post, but knew the fabric was not going to stretch as much as I would need it too. It was actually a bit harder to gather thick fabric like this than I had anticipated, but I think it came out nice.

All done! It's still a lot fuller then I originally wanted, plus the stiffness causes it to stand out more. But all and all, I'm very pleased with it, and especially love that the thickness makes it really warm!