The Modern Jeans Skirt

Hi everyone it’s Cindy here to tell you about another crafty thing I’ve been up to in the past couple months. A while ago Miss N, a younger member of the knitting and crocheting group I belong to, put out a call to action on Facebook looking for someone that could help her convert some jeans she had to skirts. Miss N is working towards her Doctor of Ministry degree. For her internship this year she is working at a university interfaith chapel where she interacts with people of many faiths. In keeping with the preferences of certain religions Miss N wanted to be able to have some long skirts to wear for work. Other than formal wear there wasn’t much she could find in the stores to fulfill her requirements so she was hoping she could convert a couple pair of jeans to skirts.

Blue Gradient Jeans Skirt (click image for full detail)

If you are of a certain age like I am you might remember making these as a youngster. Back in the seventies it was cool to turn your jeans into skirts. We usually did them short and were able to use the bottom of the legs for the filler piece. Since Miss N wanted the skirts to be long I had to find fabric to fill in the center area.

Jungle Batik Jeans Skirt (click image for full detail)

Miss N came to my home and we looked through my fabric stash to see what would work well. With a little help from Charlie we decided on the two batik fabrics you see above. Now I’ll show you how I transformed a couple pair of jeans to the skirts.

Rip open the inseams

The first thing you have to do is rip open the inseams and the center crotch seam of the pants.

Re-sewn center seam

Then you adjust the front and back center seams so they lay flat and re-sew them.

Create patterns for the inserts

In order to fill the open area I had to make a pattern for the front and the back. I have a large roll of drawing paper that I placed under the legs and then drew a line to mark the edge. If you look close you can see that the paper was folded in half. After I drew the initial line I folded the paper in half and then adjusted the pattern to be the same shape on both halves. I also had to add about a half inch for a seam allowance. I then traced the shapes to the fabric.

Since batik fabric is fairly light weight I decided to add a little heft to the center areas. I used a thin muslin for backing and a very light weight batting and then did some quilting to hold all of it together. The truth is I let my embroidery machine do the quilting.

If you look closely in the picture above you can see the line I drew on the fabric from the patterns I made.

Paisley Quilting

On the light colored skirt I used a paisley style of quilting.

You can see the pattern on the reverse side better. For each paisley I had to re-position the embroidery hoop. There were about 10 on each side. I used a dark blue thread that blended well with the fabric.

For the jungle batik I used a quilt design that had butterflies and flowers and quilted it in a dark green thread.

Butterfly and Flower quilting

I fit each block of quilting together so most of the fabric was quilted.

Inserts cut for skirt

After the quilting was done I cut the front and backs out. Then it was just a matter of pinning them in place and sewing them to the jeans. The final step was to fit and sew the hem. I’m happy to say that Miss N was very excited to get her new skirts.

Walter poses with a skirt

While I don’t have a picture of Miss N in her skirts my super model Walter was more than happy to pose with them for me. I was glad I could help out a friend with this project and didn’t ask for anything in return but Miss N insisted on compensating me and gave me a gift card for one of the eateries where our knitting/crochet group meets. Thanks Miss N I was happy to help you out on this fun project.

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