The Shirt Skirt

When there's an eight and a half year age difference between your girls, it's hard to justify saving Little Miss M's clothes until Baby P can fit into them.  That's a lot of boxes to be lugging around!  I'm a sucker for cute girl clothes and Little Miss M is definitely not lacking in the clothing department.  It's really hard to part when some of her clothes when she grows out of them.  It's almost as though I've become emotionally attached to them.  So instead of just getting rid of all of the old clothes, I decided to start re-purposing them into Baby P clothes.  It's so much cheaper than buying the fabric or buying new clothes and it makes hand-me-downs not seem to hand-me-downish.

I loved the polka-dot fabric on this shirt and couldn't bear to part with it just yet, so I turned it into a skirt for the wee one.  The only supplies needed are a shirt, thread in a coordinating color, and a piece of elastic for the waistband.  This could honestly be done with any shirt.  Adult t-shirts would be perfect for making knit maxi skirts for the little ones!  Maybe that will be my next project!

Cut across shirt from bottom of left arm-pit to bottom of right arm-pit, using a ruler as your guide to ensure a straight line.  I used my rotary cutter for a quick and straight cut.  Depending on how large the shirt is, you may want to cut it further below the arm pits so that it doesn't drown the wee one.

Turn "skirt" inside out.  Fold raw edge over 1/4 of an inch, then fold over again 1 inch to 1 1/2 inches, depending on the size of elastic you will be using.  Make sure that you are pinning as you fold to keep it in place until you begin sewing.  Place foot against left side of double folded fabric and sew around waist.

Make sure to leave about an opening about an inch wide at the end so that you can feed elastic into waistband.  I just measured the waist in one of Baby P's other skirts to get the elastic length.  Using a safety pin or whatever floats your boat, feed elastic through entire waistband, making sure you don't let other end slip through.  Stitch the two elastic ends together, going over several times to make sure it won't come apart.  Stitch opening in waistband shut.   

And there you have it!  I think it probably took less than fifteen minutes from start to finish.  It was that simple!