Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Altered Starr's... Pants to a Skirt

I did a pants to skirt alteration for StarrlightJewelry and let me tell you it was daunting! The very-popular-but-shall-stay-nameless company that made the pants must have designers/pattern makers that come up with these things while their heads are in the clouds (or in darker more unpleasant places). They were raver type pants with lots of buckles, pockets and zip-off lower legs:

The waist needed to come in at least 4" but the fullness came in handy to make a nice flared skirt. Because of the, hmm, interesting cut and sewing of these pants I wound up having to take off the waist band, unstitch half of the cargo pockets (to get at the side seams), belt loops, waist band side buckles, the inner leg seam and hem. Oh and I removed and tossed the drawstring. Yes, there was a drawstring, that only pulled in the front of the pants, which is not flattering on any of our species.

I then opened up and flattened out the front and back pieces (you can Google "jeans to skirt" and find lots of instruction if interested), took in and re-curved the side seam hip, adjusted back darts...

After a lot of time, and much patience on Starr's part, we finally have this:

 

A lovely A-line flared skirt that will fit, tada! No drawstrings allowed. Another odd element from the original pants design made the back longer than the front. I decided to leave it that way because it works for the skirt, looks good on and, well, round booties tend to pull up the back of a skirt anyway ;)

2 comments:

Sheila said...

wow...that's really cool!

Anonymous said...

the skirt is AMAZING!!!!
It's now my new most fav piece of clothing. You did such an incredible job on the entire thing.
Ill get you a picture of me wearing it soon, you did the waist of the skirt so well, it fits perfectly everywhere it should.
Keep my email in case you ever need a refrence to doing custom clothing cause Ill talk their ear off on what a great job you did for me!
♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥!

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