My mom and I found about one jillion beautiful vintage pillowcase at an estate sale recently. We sent as many as we could fit in a priority mailer to friends who work with orphans in a far away land that had requested pillowcases from supporters. We sent more than requested and we still had TONS left over – so we turned many of them into skirts and dresses for Sister J!
SO CUTE – SO EASY – SO ‘GREEN’ – SO BUDGET FRIENDLY
Here are a few of the skirts we made and the directions………………
pretty cute right?
So – a pillowcase makes for the world’s easiest first time sewing project!
1st – decide what length you want your skirt to be. Cut the excess off at the closed end of the pillowcase. The open end is going to serve as your hem. Remember to leave room to fold over at the top for your hemline.
(here is Grandma Deals & Steals (AKA – my mom) measuring out a skirt – she folded the skirt lengthwise and simply used what she had cut from another skirt as her guide for the length. Once you have determined a good length for your skirt – this would make it VERY easy to assembly line these skirts!)
Folding neatly made it very easy for her to cut straight across.
Next Step – make a small even hem all the way around.
Next Step – fold this top hem inside the skirt at about one inch. Use pins to secure your hem to make sure it is even. Seriously, this is the hardest part. Hem this down to make the casing for the elastic. Make sure to leave an opening at one side to feed the elastic.
Determine how much elastic your future skirt wearer needs around her waist. Remember this should fit snug and elastic will loosen over time.
Next Step – feed elastic through the casing………….. my mom uses a safety pin at the end and simply feeds it through from one end to the other.
Once elastic is fed all the way through, simply sew the two ends of elastic together. Also sew up the little hole left in the casing.
Viola! I told you it was easy! (yes – this is a picture of a different skirt – Sister J was already off playing in the green and white one and it was just easier to show off the grey. We made several skirts that afternoon! As I said, these skirts were all made from pillowcases we bought at an estate sale. They were 25 cents each! Including thread and elastic these skirts still cost less than 50 cents each and they were made from recycled materials! Sister J LOVES these skirts! We hardly spent a thing and we added TONS to her wardrobe! Gotta love that!
We plan on sharing a Pillowcase dress tutorial in the future too!
Enjoy ~ Kate
Hey K-would this work for an adult as well? I saw the cutest pillowcases at Ikea years ago and i remember wishing I knew how to sew so i could turn it into a skirt for myself!
hi! I think as long as your waist can fit – it would work! We joked that we could make matching sets for mommy & Sister J (we aren’t gonna do that with any that we have – and not really into matchy matchy outfits – but it would work!) You should try it!
Super cute!
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