How to turn an old dress into a skirt

by Helen Hamilton

Isn't it nice to have an indie craft tutorial that truly embraces *all* style subculture? Well, nearly all of you have got an old dress. Even the men. And you can turn it into a skirt. Simple, eh? Good times, good times...

1) Find your dress.

The more material the better for this, so find something billowy. Loads of material = extra swishyness.

Empire lines work well because you don't have to worry about a waist.

2) Cut the dress about 1 inch (or 3 cm) higher than you want it to sit.

Mark where you want the waist to be and then cut higher than this.

3) Fold the top of the now-cut dress over so there's about an inch (3 cm) of material running all the way around the inside.

4) Now sew sew sew! But not all the way around! Leave an inch (3cm) gap somewhere.

5) Get some thick-ish elastic (I usually use something just under an inch or 2.5cm in width) and cut it to fit around your waist.

Make sure there's a bit of an overlap.

If you use wider elastic make sure you allow for this when cutting the dress and folding over.

6) Thread this elastic through the channel you've sewn into the dress (that's what the gap's for).

Attaching a big safety pin to one end of the elastic and pushing/pulling that through usually helps.

7) Once this is threaded through, get the two ends of the elastic and sew them together. Securely! I'm talking sewing and sewing until you're 100% sure it's not going to come undone.

8) Sew up the gap in the channel and even out the gathers in the material.

9) Voilà! One skirt. Now wear that baby with pride!

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