Skirts from Pants ~ two styles
Here are two skirts that I made from pants ~ one is the normal pants-alteration style with some embroidery, the other is a style I haven't seen before.


This skirt was made from a pair of cords that I always felt a little dumpy in. When they got a rip on the butt I had the perfect excuse to cut them up. ;) I actually made this a few months ago, but it got cold right afterwards so I never got a picture in them until now.

This was my first altered skirt & my first hand embroidery project!
Embroidered in black & two shades of brown ~





I made this skirt this weekend. This was my favorite pair of cords but I wore them too much & they got worn in the crotch. I wanted to do a different style, and was thinking of two tiered ruffles, but that was too similar to a skirt I made from corduroy fabric a while back (http://pmthreads.livejournal.com/5465.html). So I came up with this~

I love how it turned out! It looks even better in person.

I chopped the pants off right under the back pockets & before the crotch started to curve in the front. Then I cut 16 pieces out from the legs using a template similar to a rectangle that flares out an inch at the bottom. The size of your template is really going to depend on the size of your pants ~ see the comments for a picture & more description on how to get your template measurements.

I turned the template in every direction possible to have the corduroy facing many directions. The light hits each panel a little differently because of the slants of the wale. It looks great with corduroy, & I think it would work well with the pattern on denim too. ;)

I will tell you though, stretch corduroy is a pain to work with! (I'm used to fabrics with no stretch) My serger has differential feed dogs, which keep the fabric from stretching or bunching, but I had troubles getting the fabric not to bunch when I topstitched the pieces on my regular machine & had to come up with some creative solutions for that.