How to Make a Short Skirt By Sewing Old Jeans
When an old pair of jeans is torn, stained or just isn't your style anymore, rather than throwing the jeans away or donating the pants to a thrift store, you can transform the slacks into something else, such as a denim skirt. Because you only need to know how to cut, use a seam ripper and sew a straight stitch, making a skirt out of jeans is a very basic sewing project that can be done by both beginners and experienced sewers.
Instructions
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Choose a pair of old jeans that you don't mind cutting up. These can be too long, too short or full of holes; the only requirement is that the jeans need to fit in the hip and waist area.
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Determine how long you would like your finished skirt to be from waistline to hem. You can either measure the length of a skirt that fits you well or try on the jeans and measure from the top of the waistband to the point where you would like the skirt hem to fall.
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Lay the pair of jeans flat on a table or on the floor. Using your predetermined length measurement plus an additional inch, mark a cutting line on each leg with a pen or tailor's chalk. The extra inch of length is the seam allowance that will be folded under to make the hem of the skirt.
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Cut straight across each leg of the jeans, keeping the cuts as straight as possible. Use a seam ripper to carefully open the inner leg seams. You will also need to open up the crotch seam from the center to about five inches from the waistband in the back, until you reach the base of the zipper in the front.
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Place the skirt on a table with the front side facing upward. Overlap the left crotch flap over the right side of the crotch and pin it in place. Sew it together using a straight stitch on your sewing machine. You can sew directly over the jeans' original topstitching. Repeat this on the back side of the skirt. When you finish, there will still be a triangular opening at both the front and back.
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Cut out two triangle-shaped denim inserts from the discarded legs of the jeans, using the openings in the skirt as a guide to determine how large these should be. Slide one insert under the opening at the front of the skirt and pin it into place.
Sew over the original topstitching as you did at the crotch to hold the insert in place. Repeat this on the back side. If the bottoms of the inserts are longer than the bottom of the skirt, trim so these are even.
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Fold the bottom inch of the skirt inward to create the hem. Pin the hem all the way around to keep it even and then stitch into place.
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References
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