upcycling long skirt into bolo pants

Hello lovelies!

Sorry I took the week off last week, but after the ULTIMATE OMG T-SHIRT RECONSTRUCTION TUTORIAL SERIES, I was absolutely wiped. I needed a few days to recover from all the making, and to get inspired to make some new things!

Like this thing, for example!

A quick between-errands stop to the thrift store resulted in this purchase:

It's a fabulous long crushed velvet elastic-waist skirt with some pretty awesome embroidery at the bottom. I've been seeing a lot of pins on Pinterest where women are taking skirts and turning them into palazzo pants, but painfully few tutorials on the matter. The ones that did have tutorials either weren't going to give me just what I wanted, or required the use of a pants pattern. PSH. PATTERNS. PUH.

So, click "Read More" to find out how I made this fabulous skirt into a pair of statement pants!

So, I realized as I began that while I don't have a pattern for a pair of pants, I do know roughly how pants are constructed, and I also have pants. Specifically, I have this old pair of pajama pants I never wear anymore but have, for some reason, kept them all this time.

I folded the skirt in half (inside out) and laid it so that the folded edge was as straight up and down on my work surface as I could get it. Then I folded my pants in half and laid them on top.

You'll notice that the top elastic edge of the pants lines up just right with the top of the skirt, and the point at the bottom of the crotch meets the folded side of the skirt perfectly. SCORE! See that little sliver of skirt peeking out above the crotch of the pant?

Cut that off. Leave the rest of the skirt! You can adjust the width of the pant legs later if you like.

Then unfold your skirt and cut a straight line from the bottom of the crotch you just cut to the bottom of the skirt.

It's already starting to look like pants! Yay!

Now, with the skirt still inside out, shift it around so that the front crotch curves and the back crotch curves are lined up with themselves. It'll look like one long solid piece with two little wings sticking off of the sides.

Pin your crotch curves together with the edges lined up:

And sew along both curves using a straight stitch and backstitching a few times at each end. Don't sew past the bottom point of the crotch! Like I did...sigh. Ripping seams out of crushed velvet is a struggle I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.

Anyway, now you should have something that looks like this:

The front and back of the crotch are sewn up but the legs are still open on the inside. Time to take care of that...

Pin along the inseam of the pant legs:

And sew them up! Allll the way around to make sure it's all closed up and there aren't any "pod bay door" incidents.

Then...

JUST KIDDING YOU'RE DONE!

I wore these the day I made them to an Asian arts festival in my town. It was super fun and I felt all kinds of dramatic and exciting as I breezed through the crowd and munched on my kebab and bulgogi and sipped my mango lassi.

Then I tripped over them.

Yeah, with all of my grace and awesomeness, the pants were just far too ginormous to handle it. I took a big step onto a high curb, stepped onto the hem of my pants, and fell. Those who witnessed it said it was graceful and delicate, but also hilarious. I scuffed up my knee and the top of my foot.

Then I came home and made the pants a smidge narrower by simply turning them inside out and sewing up about an inch on each outer seam.

Anyway, this was super fun and I will definitely be doing it again.

DRAMA! EXCITEMENT! ART!!!

XOXO