Recycled Skirt

Today I got to sew. I spent hours sewing in fact. Its the first time since we moved that I have had the sewing machine out, So of course I over did it.

I started this project a while back (probably 8 months ago, before my life turned upside down) So I do not have any pictures of how these jeans started out, or the dress that I used either. But the new skirt and its many stages have pictures.

I started with an old beloved pair of jeans that had worn to thin in the thigh area to be suitable to wear any longer. I cut cut off the legs just at the fold for the crotch. (sorry there is no nice way to say that when you are talking about sewing old clothes) I left the top part of the jeans in tact. I then disassembled a less then flattering very out dated, someone donated it to me dress. The print is a cute little floral number that I love but the cut and style were very dated and just not so flattering. We wont mention the buttons... yes they were that bad.

Once I got the dress into pieces I started to assemble the layers. I needed to take two strips and sew them together then I ran stay stitching around the top.

It looked like this:

Once that was finished I started the long process of pinning the piece to the top half of the skirt while I pulled the thread to add small gathers to the floral part.

Like This:

Once I had a million pins in the thing I began to sew it together. First I sewed it inside out, then I flipped it and sewed it with a top stitch (in the ditch) as shown below.

First row completed it looked like this:

Then I moved onto the second tier, which is another layer of the same floral fabric.

Second Tier added

 I turned and top stitched (in the ditch) each layer for added strength.

closer look of stitching in the ditch

Then I decided to finish off the edge with some eyelet lace. It gave it a nice finished look and its a perfectly comfortable skirt.

Eyelet going on one way

Eyelet flipped and being top stitched in place

I got a cute skirt that cost me nothing more then a little time and energy. Its all completely recycled right down to the eyelet lace that once belonged to my grandmother.

Ignore the backdrop, just look at the cute skirt!
Please?