Because We All Need a Little Heat

How do you get an air-guitar-playing, Tae-Kwon-Do-fighting, multiple-guns-blasting, soldier-in-the-making, 6-year-old boy to wear a tie and like it?

Kick it up a notch, baby.

The One With Remakes Part 2: A New Skirt

I know you'll all been on the edge of your seats dying for part 2 of my remakes. This one took me forever to finish; I think I started in May. I'm sure I took out 100 seams I sewed to correct mistakes before getting something I was happy with.

So first of all, let me tell you what I started out with. I went to Goodwill, looking for something I could turn into a skirt. (Goodwill because if you're going to tear something apart, with the possibility of ruining it, paying only $4 is the way to go.) I found a fantastic pair of men's pants. Let me tell you--they were huge. Not just huge, but ginormous. The waste was a 44 and I'm kicking myself that I didn't take the inseam measurement. They were so long that I couldn't really get all of them in the picture. They were very close to the length of the door they were hanging on. When I held them up to my head, they were almost as tall as I am. I can only guess that these pants were made for a man whose waist was almost 5'7. Then how tall would that make this man? 7 feet? Yeah. I said they were ginormous.

This is what I could fit into the picture.

The other thing about these pants was they were linen. Navy with a white pin stripe. Now, I don't know about the kind of men you know, but I have yet to know any that wear linen pants. I think linen pants are reserved for pimpin' black men (and by pimpin' I mean down-like that, you got it goin' on kind) or white men who wear polyester shirts, white sports coats, Sperry Topsiders with no socks, and straw hats. I can only imagine that the man who wore these pants had to duck while walking through doorways and had to drive a Ford Expedition and still had to have the front seat custom made to sit a few feet back than normal because his legs wouldn't fit in any other car. If you see this man wondering the streets of Lafayette, please let me know. I'd love to meet him.

Ok, so back to my point. I decided these pants would be my new skirt. These were very high-end pants and the details were very impressive: the waist band, lining (yeah, they were lined even), and interior piping. I can only imaging the classy 'Massive and Huge' store ('Big and Tall' doesn't quite cut it for these pants) at which they were purchased. I really wanted to leave as much of the original details and integrity of the workmanship that went into these. This was easier said then done. I started by taking apart seams. I took the pant legs apart, began to take the waistband off, cut out the lining, and cut out the panels that had the front and back pockets. Since I had so much fabric to work with, I didn't need the pockets and didn't want them. I did keep the original zipper because of it's quality.


Taking pant part off the waistband.

Detail in the waistband.

Pants coming apart and lining removed.

I cut the bottom half of the pants off and sewed in more panels to create a full skirt. It was hard to figure out how wide to make the skirt so I had to try it on a lot, all pinned up, trying to get the size right. I also started to work on adding the pleats. Trying to make the pleats evenly spread was difficult as well. Once I got the pleats right I sewed it back into the waist band.

Pinning pleats together.

Pinning back to the waistband to work on the fit.

Finally, several months later, I ended up with this.

This is the inside view of the original waistband still intact. Well, half of it anyway.

So there you go. Now go ahead and get back on the edge of your seat as you wait for part 3. If there is a part 3, that is. So suspenseful, I know.