Today I started and finished a quickie sewing project. For the last couple of years I’ve had a pair of corduroy pants sitting on top of my repairs-and-alterations bin (which has been gathering dust; I honestly have no idea what is in there anymore).

The pants were fine – nothing wrong with them, fit fine – but looking a bit dated; if I recall correctly, I was wearing them when I met my husband 6 years ago, and I’d been wearing them for a few years at that point, and had gotten them at a  second-hand shop to boot. They had definitely lived a good life as pants.

So, last night I found this tutorial on BurdaStyle for turning pants into a skirt. The pants were heavier weight and more jeans-like than trouser-like, but I thought “They’ve been sitting here for a couple years, forgotten about – why not?”

Well, here is why not: the fabric on a pair of cotton trouser pants is far easier to work with, sew and reshape than corduroy. This oversight led to spending an hour on what I probably could have finished in half that time. The issue was the fly.

You see, I cut as directed from the fly to the hem and stitched my little seams.

When I tried the skirt on, it looked like I’d stuffed my drawers with a pair of socks. This spurred a vicious cycle of rip-sew-rip-sew-rip-sew until I managed to get it looking like I’d just snuck a little hankie in there.

Anyway, what ultimately worked was ripping up the lower edge of the fly, stitching up to the zipper, and then tacking the fly back down over the new seam.

Here is the final result; you will notice that I have chosen to stand so as to stretch the fabric around the fly.

Front:

and back

For one of my next projects, the husband has a shirt that had a cigarette burn put into it when he was out one night (apparently be a random shirt-burning stranger who happened to get close enough to the front of his shirt to put a hole in it right where it would be touching his skin – that’s believable, right?). I will be attempting to convert said shirt into a dress.

***

In other news, I’ve slightly simplified my Ravelympics projects. The pirate mittens are now fingerless gloves with a mitten flap, but I’m starting to think even that is a bit over-the-edge. One of my brother’s kids possibly thinks my profession actually is Pirate (how awesome would it be to have “Pirate” or even “Associate Pirate” on your resume?), so I was thinking about knitting up a felted pirate hat & eye patch for him. I don’t know; I do need to get my plans straight so if I need to order something I can do it in time.

---

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

• His & Hers
• New knits
• What I’ve Done in 2009 (checking in)
• New pants and a new skirt