When in doubt, make a skirt.

I've picked up a couple contract jobs recently that are cutting into my sewing time. Knowing I only have a couple hours to sew makes it harder to start on a complicated project.

The other day, I wanted to work on a cool little dress with an open back (similar to Simplicity 2180), but while looking for mock-up/lining fabric I stumbled upon a pair of men's PJ's I bought a couple years ago. They didn't fit me, but I really liked the fabric, which is an Asian newspaper print (as you can see below). I would like to make a fancier newspaper or comic book print dress, but I haven't seen a fabric that is good enough for the effort. This newsprint was very limited and sat around in a box because I was too nervous to cut into it. I finally decided to do it, for something simple enough that I couldn't mess it up, though still useful... this is of course a skirt, because that's my default "yea, I can knock this out in an hour."

This was a pretty straight forward reconstruction. I cut the pants right above the crotch (and had to do some fiddling because the fly on them went down very far), then used the legs to cut strips for the ruffle. The pants had a drawstring, which I find kind of annoying so I supplemented that with elastic.

I like to top-stitch the ruffle seam because I think it helps them lay in the correct direction. You can kind of make this out in the above image.

The pants had some pretty large pockets, which is pretty great for a casual skirt. Overall, a nice quick project and I finally used these for something. Yay.