I saw these shorts on clearance at Burlington and thought it’d be cute to turn it into a skirt. The skirt I had in mind was calf length though. Obviously, there wasn’t enough material in the shorts themselves to be able to do that, so I needed a matching fabric. More on that later… Right now, I’m going to show you how to convert a pair of denim shorts into a skirt.
First thing first. Turn your shorts inside out. We will need to let out a couple seams and that is much better to do from the inside. If you choose to seam rip from the top, you run the risk of poking your fabric and it be noticeable.
The first seam you want to take undone is the middle (crotch) seam. I do this by taking my seam ripper and running it up the outer edge stitches until I reach the zipper end. This loosens all the threads. Next, pull on the backside of the stitches where the threads look like loops. All the threads will now be undone.
Open your shorts so that it now resembles a skirt. The middle crotch seam will now be the outside seams. Mark a line from the top edge of where the stitches are undone until the bottom of the new skirt. Repeat on the other side. This line marks the new seam.
Flip right side out and you will see topstitches on what will now be your new side seams. You will have to remove some of these stitches to cut the sides down so it can be a skirt. If you choose you can remove all the topstitches going up. The point of the latter would be if you don’t have the same thread color of the original topstitch and you don’t want it to be noticeable an alteration was done.
Next turn the skirt inside out, lining up your new middle seam. Pin down the side seams. Sew from the top of the sketched line down to the bottom of the skirt edge. (Make sure to backstitch at the beginning and end.) If you have a serger, finish this seam getting as close as possible.
Turn the skirt right side out. Make sure that all the seams look esthetically pleasing and adjust any stitching that is crooked or bulky.
Whether you will be replacing the original topstitching or not, you still must sew a line to secure your seams. Pin down the seams before you sew.
Next, be sure to cut your skirt so that it is even all around.
Now, sew a few stitches down the front and back seams. You can use one stitch straight down or make two stitches with a double needle or coverstitch. As you can see, I didn’t replace the original topstitching, but it’s not noticeable.
At this point, you can choose to leave the edge like this, hem it, or add additional fabric to it to make it any length you want. As I stated above, I wanted it to fall calf length, so I sewed additional fabric to it.
…The fabric I bought winded up being different than I originally thought so I had to improvise. Since it had a lightweight flow, I opted to attach a 2-tier ruffle skirt… What do y’all think?
