yay, it’s the first of my many-part series of how-to’s for skirts made from various recycled things! i’m going to try to do one per week, and there will be 4 or 5 or maybe even more different skirt projects, woo!

i’m starting simple with this t-skirt – you just need one t-shirt and some basic sewing ability. oh yeah, i should add, about all the designs: i am not at all a skilled sewer, so every project i do that involves sewing will be friendly to low experience levels. you’ll basically need a machine and the knowledge to use it and that’s all, nothing fancy! ok here we go!

first, pick out a shirt. to make sure your skirt will fit how you want it, measure around your butt/thighs area to get your largest skirt-area measurement. my measurement is 44in, and i wanted my skirt to be comfy-fitting, not too snug, so i made sure my shirt measured at least 22in across or a little more, meaning it would fit around me fine without having to stretch too much. you will be sewing the shirt in a bit, so if you want it extra loose, it should be about 4 inches bigger than you are. t-shirts do stretch, of course, so depending on your specific shirt’s stretchiness and your fitting preference, your shirt of choice could measure less than you do. i chose this rem shirt that was pete’s from high school – he almost gave it away when cleaning out his closet, but i held onto it to make it something new, yay!

now you need to chop off the sleeves. instead of cutting along the seams, just cut straight up following the body of the shirt. i used a rotary cutter, but scissors will work fine.

now your shirt should look like this (front side):

now chop off the top, straight across, to cut off the collar part and open up the whole thing.

slip on the soon-to-be skirt and hold it together where it fits comfortably. pin in place down the sides so that the two sides meet the edges asymmetrically. the way i did this: when i tried on the skirt i pinned only the top pin on each side, then carefully took it off. i put it flat on the ground and put the pins in as shown in the picture, the left side going down further than the right side. then i (very carefully) slipped the skirt back on to make sure it fit well. (use safety pins if you don’t want to poke yourself when trying it on.)

now sew along where the pins were – wrong sides together!! the dotted lines are over the stitching, which you could barely see in the picture. then cut through both layers one inch out from the seam, represented by the solid line.

on each side, fold the one inch flappy parts outwards and sew them down along the edges, forming tubes on either side of the seams about 3/4inch wide. do not sew these parts closed on any end! when the flaps get narrow at the bottom, just keep sewing parallel to the center seam until you hit the end of the flap. (i only have a photo from after i put in the drawstring, but you get the idea.)

cut drawstring pieces at least as long as up the seam tubes and back down. i used t-shirt pieces – when you cut strips of t-shirt fabric about 1/2in-1in wide and stretch them out they make great cord for this purpose. you can even use strips cut from the sleeves you cut off if you want the same color.

on each side of the skirt, pin a safety pin to the end of the drawstring and thread it up one tube and back down the other side.

now just pull the strings to cinch it all up and tie in a knot or a bow – you can do this while wearing the skirt to get it cinched just right. this picture is from my first version of this design (which is shown below), with contrasting thread so you can see what’s going on better. it’s always good to use zig-zag stitch on t-shirt fabric, but since you’re scrunching up the sewn parts of this skirt it’s not super important in this case.

i have this vision in my head of making this same skirt design except crazier – with like 7-9 scrunched drawstring parts, all different lengths, with one going all the way to the bottom! someday when i have a little free time i’ll try it out. you could also make this skirt with the drawstring only on one side, and just sew the other with right sides together for a regular seam. if you make a skirt based on this design idea, i’d really love to see a picture!!