Creative people, I need your help! I want to turn some outgrown pairs of DD’s leggings into a skirt for her, and I can’t find a pattern. It doesn’t have to be very neat, and patchwork is fine as I’m going to use 2 different colours, but I have only the vaguest idea how to go about it. Please can someone point me in the right direction? The leggings are ankle length, and I want the skirt to be knee length, quite full. I have several pairs of leggings & a t shirt queuing up for the job!

Thank you.

I turned a pair of cords into a skirt not long ago, it was pretty easy. Hopefully someone will point you in the directon of some proper instructons, mine were in an old magazine. Basically you unpick the seams up one leg and down the other then lay the opened out trousers as flared or not as you want and add fabric in the gap. You unpick up the front and back seams at the top a bit too then overlap the top of one leg over the other and stitch it down. I cut the bottoms off my trousers to make a knee length skirt and used the bit I cut up to fill the gap so only used the one pair of trousers. I added some pretty fabric flowers to jazz mine up a bit too. Have fun, Im planning to do some more when I have the time….

Just had a quick search for instructions and this looked like roughly what I did http://www.notmartha.org/tomake/jeanskirt/
I have never tried to sew jersey material so don’t know if there is anything that needs to be done differently.

Thank you, flower. I’ll have a go, basing my efforts on that design. If it doesn’t work, the leggings will make nice soft rags! If it does, hurrah!

ohh ill be watching this with interest as we have a few pairs of leggings that could do with being used elswhere!!
great thread!

Well, I’ve ripped the leggings’ seams (tricky not to make big holes with jersey); cut two triangles out of an old t-shirt; and pinned them between the legs, front & back. It looks quite good. Now I’m waiting for DD to get home from school so that she can try it on. If it works I’ll be stitching tonight & will try to post a photo of the finished article.

Well, it didn’t quite turn out as I planned, but it worked nonetheless. To make it a suitably swirly skirt I had to split the legs up the sides as well, so I sewed 4 panels in instead of the recommended two. I used red leggings & patches from the front of a blue tshirt which was outgrown and the sleeve of an old white tshirt (it was for a Jubilee party!) & I was very pleased with it. It took quite a lot of fiddling about to get the patches right, and I had to hand stitch it because I don’t have a sewing machine (I’m scared of them!) so it took a while, but it was worth it. If you use leggings you need to split them to about an inch from the waistband, otherwise the skirt will be too snug round the tummy. The patches & the ex-legs weren’t the same length, so the skirt ended up with an irregular hem, but the leggings had bows on the bottoms which DD was determined I should leave on, so I did! I might do it again with another pair, and if I could learn to use a sewing machine I definitely would.