This tutorial was originally published on Crafting a Green World in 2017.
There are several ways to refashion pants into a skirt, including this cute method for making a denim skirt out of a pair of old blue jeans. Even that method, though, can feel overwhelming to a newbie sewer, so here's an even easier method!
As you can see in the image above, all you need for this refashion are:
a pair of pants that fit well at the waist. They can be as ripped, stained, or ugly as they need to be in the legs, as long as they're well-fitting in the waist. This is a great way to refashion pants that are too short after your kid hits her latest growth spurt, or winter pants that you know will be too short next fall. It's also great for those carpenter/bootleg/skinny/whatever style of jeans you've got that used to be trendy but are now just laughable, the poor things.
an A-line skirt whose diameter at some point matches the hip measurement of your pants. The waist on this skirt doesn't matter at all, as long as at some point its flare has the same measurement as the hip measurement of your pants. That's because you're going to do this:
1. Line up the pants and the skirt at their matching measurements. As you can see in the above image, I've drawn a chalk line exactly where I want to cut the pants--see how this allows me to keep the entire waist and pockets of the pants? You can sew a well-fitting skirt without knowing how to set pockets or sew a waistband or use a zipper foot or make a button hole!
Line up the skirt (or dress--in this tute, I'm using a very sketchy-looking thrifted dress whose fabric my kid loves), so that the point at which its flare matches the length of that chalk line are exactly lined up. Here is where you also make sure that the bottom hem of the skirt is exactly parallel to that chalk line--you don't want your skirt to hang weird!
2. Cut the two pieces of clothing along the marked line. Hold them down firmly to keep them from shifting, then cut them both at the same time.
3. Sew the skirt piece and pants piece together. Turn the skirt piece inside-out, then pin it, right sides together, to the pants piece so that the raw edges are lined up. Sew the two pieces together and then finish the seam.
My daughter and I used this skirt as part of her design for this year's Trashion/Refashion Show in our town, which is why it has Christmas lights safety pinned to it: She paired it with a hooded shirt that I sewed from another pair of pants and a dressy blouse, and a cape that she cut out of an old fleece blanket, but I'll tell you about those another time!