Sewing Skirts Without a Pattern

One of my goals this year is to do more clothes sewing. Quilts and crafty projects come easy for me, but when it comes to clothing that is another story. I do so much better looking at something and figuring it out than trying to understand a pattern.

Where we live there are many good thrift stores and you can easily find great name brands for just a few dollars, but so often the problem is finding clothes that fit right. The women in our household are busty, and… we’re short, and…. well… we are wide. Most of the time things need to be hemmed, but the biggest problem is keeping the busts covered, yet not sloppy looking.

Anyway… I have found several dresses at the thrift store lately that I like the skirt part, but not the top part, or I’ll find a skirt that is not my size but I know I can make it work, more of this to come later this week. My problem is I have a stack of things that need to be altered and no time, but this week I want to get a few things FINISHED!

I’ve been surfing the net looking for ways to make clothing without a pattern, here are a few that look good:

Quality Time - Cotton Candy Pink

Angry Chicken - 5 Minute Skirt

Princess Nimble Thimble - A Line Tutorial

If you know of any other free and easy ways to make clothes be sure to leave a comment and let us all know!

Category: Sewing

Kim M says:

Thank you! I will be comin’ back to this post. Have you tried to make skirts out of pants? Two of my friends and I had a sewing party last week and transformed blue jeans into cute skirts. Super easy and really cute! We had a lot of fun with fabric. I filled mine in with red patterned fabric.

http://frugalliving.about.com/od/colthing/ss/Jeans_to_Skirt.htm

06/21/2010 at 9:29 pm

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Darcy says:

I’ve been making skirts for myself and my girls for a couple of years without patterns. I have a few techniques.

1. Take your waist measurement and cut your material 1 1/2 times that and whatever length you want (with a few extra inches for the hem and turnover for the elastic). Sew the side, hem the bottom and then turn over for the elastic. Feed the elastic through and close up the seam. You can do variations of this by doing tiers; for each tier, just do 1 1/2 times the tier before and run a gather stitch before attaching.

2. Take a pair of pants, cut off just above the cr*tch. Add one or more tiers as mentioned above for desired length.

3. Take a pair of pants that still look decent but might be a little short. Rip out the inside seam. Cut two triangular pieces of material and sew on the front and back.

06/22/2010 at 3:42 am

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