Remember these jeans?

Well, because of the economical way I placed my pattern pieces, I was able to save most of the top half to turn into a denim skirt. The look I wanted for this was a bit more 90’s grunge, so I planned to leave the hem open so that the fabric could ravel a bit and look nice and grungy!

The first thing I did was to cut the crotch seam open, leaving the flat felled part attached to the front, and try it on. Of course it would have been a million times easier to have chosen a pair of jeans that fit my waist to make a jeans skirt out of, but that would have been way too easy. These were men’s jeans and obviously were going to require some adjustments. It’s not quite visible in the photo below, but I sewed about 2 1/2″ from each side seam, as far up as the waistband. Happily, this was just outside the edges of the existing back pockets meaning they didn’t need to be repositioned.

The sequence of photos below is meant to explain how I dealt with the waistband after taking the sides in quite a bit. First I cut the waistband all the way across at the right and left sides and unpicked the seam a few centimetres on the back waistband…

Then I pinned and seamed the (front) pocket bag onto the front on each side…

Then I trimmed the back waistband so that it would sit over the front waistband in such a way that the join would be hidden by a helpfully-placed belt loop on the front…

…and sewed it into position like that. It actually looks better than I’d anticipated.

Waistband sorted, next step was joining the legs of the jeans together to make the skirt front and back. For the front, this was a matter of trimming and sewing over the flat felled part I had cut around a few minutes previously. There was a triangle of fabric missing which was soon rectified by inserting an off-cut and sewing over the flat felled part with orangey thread.I did the same thing on the back, except I had to create a faux-flat-felled (try saying that three times fast) look which is not entirely convincing.

Trimming a rough hem left me with something wearable:

After wearing for a few minutes, the hem started to take the slightly ravelled look that I was after. I think it looks great. Combined with some grungy eye make up, it was the perfect look for dinner out in Shoreditch! I have to say that this skirt is pretty much the most comfortable item of clothing I own, or have ever owned. A definite keeper :)