Recycled Skirt Dress

In the 30 minutes after breakfast this morning I made this little dress for Maya. I was inspired by this post from Soulemama.com to turn a mom sized skirt into a new dress for my little one.

I picked this skirt up from a second hand store a while back for less than a dollar. I kept coming across it in my fabric stash and thinking, "Oh, it would so easy to turn this into a dress". But I wasn't quite sure how I wanted to do it until I read the post at Soulemama.


I started out by sewing the pockets closed and then cutting them out completely. Then I used a seam ripper to take the side ties off.


The waist of the skirt had a bit of stretched out elastic in it already, so I left that in place and used it as a guide for my top casing. I folded the elastic towards the inside of the skirt, creating a casing for my new elastic. I stitched around, leaving about a 2 inch opening to insert the elastic through. Then I used Maya as a model to measure the elastic around her chest (about level with her armpits). I cut about 2-3 inches off the elastic so it would be tight enough to hold the dress up.

I put a large safety pin through one end of the elastic and fed it through the opening in the casing. When it was all the way through, I overlapped the ends and stitched them together. I then sewed the opening in the casing closed, enclosing the elastic.


For the straps, I used the ties that had originally been on the skirt. I had Maya try on the dress and decided where I wanted to place the straps and how long they needed to be. I stitched the straps on the inside of the dress, sewing over the casing seam and criss-crossing them in the back.

All of this took less than 30 minutes and the total cost of the project, less than $1! Not to mention this skirt was saved from a possible life at the dump, thrifty and green!