Over, Under, Sideways, Down

 Patti Smith & Robert Mapplethorpe c.1969,
Gerard Malanga, photographer.

That's the T-shirt skirt.  And it's reversible - in theory at least.  I think it turned out pretty neat.  Nice weight to it with that lining.  Anyway, I was given a men's dark gray T.  I thought I'd try my hand at making a skirt out of it...and then along the way decided to make it reversible using this light pink T I had.  Liked the combo.  I used the waistband of some old yoga pants that happened to be the same color as the gray shirt.  Lucky me.  Then I thought, why not use the T shirt sleeves for pockets.

Warning:  what follows is a blow-by-blow account of the making.


First I cut a straight line, horizontally across the shirt, below the collar, from sleeve end to sleeve end.  That cut line will become the waist line.  To create side pockets, I folded the sleeves inward toward the center of the shirt and along the side fold of the shirt (remember the top of the sleeves have been cut off), aligning the raw edges of the sleeves with the raw edges of the shirt.  Then, pinning it, I just continued the side fold of the shirt with a stitch up the folded sleeve about 3 inches.  Stopped, and then about 1 inch from the waistline (or top of the raw edges) I continued stitching.  This will be the opening for the pocket.  Now all that's needed is to stitch the outer edge of the sleeve for the outer limits of the pocket.  (The bottom seam is already done as that's the bottom seam of the sleeve.)  I trimmed the hem of the sleeve after stitching the pocket seam to alleviate extra thickness.  Pockets done.  I did not do pockets for the pink shirt, because it had little cap sleeves.  So I just sewed a straight stitch up the sleeves corresponding to the side seams/ or folds of the shirt as the case may be.

Next I seam ripped the hems of the 2 shirts and ironed them.  I didn't want the extra bulk.  Then I sewed the two shirts together at the hems with a zig-zag stitch, right sides together.

I ran a gather stitch along the top of both shirts separately and pulled the strings to produce evenly spaced gathers to get the shirts to fit the waistband I had removed from my old yoga pants.  I pinned the gray shirt gathers on top of one side of the waistband and the pink shirt gathers on top of the other side.  Using gray thread on the sewing machine and pink on the bobin, I zig-zag stitched slowly over all those pins, attaching both shirt/skirts to the waistband.  And that's the way it is.