How To: Make a Skirt from an Old T-Shirt

As I inch closer to finally shedding my overused winter jacket and donning flip flops once again, I’m admittedly a little saddened by the state of my warm weather clothing options. In keeping with the 100 Thing Challenge and my general philosophy of consuming less, I’m having a hard time justifying going out and buying new clothes. It’s not that I even really need new clothes, I’m just bored with what I’ve got.

Since taking on the 100 Thing Challenge a month ago, we’ve been slowly adding things to a growing pile of clothes, linens, jewelery, and nicknacks, with the intention of hauling it all off to Value Village.
While aimlessly wandering around the internet, I stumbled across a photo of a girl in a skirt. The quality of the fabric caught my eye. With closer inspection, I determined it was made from a t-shirt. Brillant.
Sure enough, there are posts and tutorials all over the internet that teach you how to make your very own skirt from a t-shirt. Some acutally require sewing, others just a few snips and tucks, and you’re good to go.
I’m no sewer, but was intrigued nevertheless.

With some rummaging through my discard pile, I found a stack of old t-shirts that Vibhu had grown tired of and with careful diliberation chose my guinea pig. Following the directions from cutecircuit.com, I snipped, folded, and voila! I had myself an instant skirt.

Now this is not exactly the kind of skirt I can wear to my government job, but it’ll be perfect for the weekends and even better for traveling. The durability of the skirt is questionable, but it’s a shirt that was getting tossed anyways, so there’s no harm in sending it to the compost bin once the seams have started to give. 

The inverted sleeves are a little akward, but a form-fitting, stretchy shirt seems to be just the trick for keeping the extra fabric in place. And if you’re feeling really domestic, you could even stitch up the sleeves to create functional pockets.

With all of the awesome old t-shrits out there, just imagine the possibilties. Happy Earth Day!