My first tut!

Hey all,

I went away for 5 days over New Years and I took these shorts that I got for like 15 bucks  the day before I went away. I didn't even try them on, I just assumed they'd be fine and took them with me. This is what they look like:

When I put them on they fit me but they were shaped a little funny and so go all wedgey-ish when I walk. Which is not cool. Not cool at all. Normally when that happens with clothes I put them in a drawer and forget about them but I really need to stop doing that (I have more clothes than my drawers can fit!). Luckily, all hope was not lost for these shorts and I decided to turn them into a pretty little skirt. It was actually really easy! And I did a tut for it. Here goes!

Step 1 (optional): Take a pair of shorts (I chose some slightly stretchy denim ones) and get your cat to coat the shorts in an annoying layer of black hair.

Step 2: Unstitch the front seam to just below the zip flap and the back seam up to the bottom of the pockets.

You should end up with something like this on the back (didn't get a pic of the front, sorry!):

Step 3: Fold and pin the front so that it lays flat and the centre seam is straight. This can be a bit fiddly because of the shape the fabric was cut in, but you will eventually get it looking straight.

At this point the front and back of the skirt won't match up at the bottom, don't worry about this, we'll be evening the edges up later. =]

Step 4: Fold and pin the back pieces together, following the curve of the piece round a bit.

  Step 5: Sew close to the edge of where you've pinned. Then sew a second line next to the first to reinforce and to make it match all the other stitching on your shorts.

The pic makes this look really wonky but I promise it's not that bad. =]

 Step 6: Turn your skirt inside out and trim the excess fabric from the front and back with some pinking shears.

Step 7: Even up the bottom of your skirt. I put the skirt on and decided where I wanted it to sit then took it off and sorta just eyeballed it. Because the shorts were fairly short to begin with, I didn't really want to take off length, just straighten up the bottom edge. No pic of this, sorry.


Step 8: At this point you can fold under and hem the bottom edge of your skirt, or you can have it frayed like I did (I didn't really have enough length to hem it, lol). If you want to hem it, turn your skirt inside out, fold up the bottom edge, pin and sew. If you want to fray it, sew all the way around your skirt twice, about 1cm from the bottom edge to create a barrier for the frayed edge. Then use your unpicker to drag the horizontal fibres out of the bottom edge. My ironing board cover is the same colour as the skirt, heh.

Step 9: Make it look prettier. I ironed heatbond stuff to some of the scraps leftover from the leopard print apron and cut out a big heart for the pocket and a tiny heart for the front of the skirt. 

 Step 10: Position the hearts (or whatever else you wanna put on your skirt) and iron on. I then sewed around the little heart with a tight zigzag stitch. 

I didn't machine stitch the big heart because I placed it onto the back pocket and it would have stitched my pocket closed so instead I just hand sewed around the edge with some black embroidery floss. Hopefully when I wash the skirt the edges of the heart will fray a little.

Front

Back

And that's it! A cute mini from some bad wedgey shorts. I hope the instructions aren't too confusingly done or anything. I do tend to ramble on and on.

Take care!
San xx