The skinny on my skinnies

I own a lot of work pants. The problem with about ten pairs is that they don't look good with flats and heels. In fact, I struggle to find any shoes that go well with them. (I bought most of them years ago, and I bought them solely because I liked the color and the price.)

I decided to keep the pants because I thought I might have an epiphany about how to wear them. And an epiphany I had. I realized that the only part of these pants that annoyed me was the cut. Plus, every time I hunted for the same colors in a fit that I liked, I came up empty. Enter my epiphany. I did a little search on Pinterest for "making skinny pants." (Feel free to peruse my DIY Fashion board here.) Note: I could have taken these pants to a tailor, but that was money I did not want to spend. I also like learning new things :)

For these pants, I read this tutorial and this one. However, after my troubles, I viewed this video, which comes from this blog. I like her method much better. Plus, she explains how to avoid some of the same problems I ran into while on my adventure of pant fixing.

I'm not going to provide you a tutorial because these work just fine, but I'll tell you some tips (from a novice) and materials.

Necessary materials: seam ripper, sewing scissors, pins, chalk/fabric marker, and sewing machine.

Tips:

• Do NOT cut your pants until you've tried them on with the new stitching. For the first leg I did, I couldn't squeeze my calf into the pants. I needed my handy seam ripper to fix that mistake. 
• If you don't have a fabric marker, chalk works just fine. You moms out there probably have sidewalk chalk just chilling in your house. (One tutorial recommends a Sharpie. If you use the first two tutorials, I do not recommend Sharpie because it can get on the pants you're using as a pattern, which is another reason I suggest the video.) 
• Read both tutorials and watch the video before you begin. 
• I completely finished one leg before the other, which I thought was good because I could measure the unfinished leg against the finished one. I sort of used the finished leg as a pattern for the other one. It helped me keep them identical. 
• If you don't want to sew and have a good tailor, they can do this for you :) 

pant leg comparison in my seemingly yellow hallway...

My pseudo emo look 

Originally, I had "charcoal straight/skinny work pants (must have belt loops)" on my closet holes list. I now can cross that item off the list without having spent any money. Win! 

The shirt is recent and from Old Navy. The heels are NOT recent and are Aerosoles from Marshall's. 

Once we sell this house and I don't have to worry constantly about not making messes, I will move on to my pair of brown work pants. I think I'll go for more of a straight leg with those. 

I hope this post prevents you from donating/selling a pair of pants just because you dislike the bottom half of your bottoms :)

I turned two dresses into skirts.

I had these two dresses sitting in my closet. Well, one of them was actually in a sewing basket all folded up. Allow me to clarify something: I do not like strapless dresses. 

One, I have nothing with which to hold up said strapless dress. 

Two, they create these weird indentations above my chest (or lack thereof.)  I think they serve as a reminder of how not well endowed I am. 

Three, it is not cute to be constantly pulling up a dress or top, which is why I decided against a strapless wedding dress. I had one encounter with a strapless dress for prom one year. I was so ill equipped to wear this dress that I had to be velcroed into it, like 1/4" thick velcro strapped into that thing, and it still kept falling down. 

Anyway, I knew I would never wear these dresses as dresses, but I could part with neither the lovely black and white striped silk nor the blue and white striped seersucker fabrics. Finally, after allowing these dresses to sit around unworn for YEARS, I decided to bite the bullet and make skirts. If the mission failed, I really would have lost nothing since I wasn't wearing them anyway.

I went on a hunt and found this tutorial that didn't require removing the zipper in order to fashion a skirt. 

She does a fine job of instructing, so I'm not going to tell you how to do it. I will tell you a few tips/notes/things I learned during the process.

1. Try on the dress first and zip it up to where you want it to be as a skirt. Make sure it would look normal; otherwise, this dress might not work for your purposes. 

2. I have no idea how this process works on non-zippered (haven't taken that venture yet) or non-strapless dresses. 

3. If you have two layers to the dress, make sure that, after you chop off the top, you sew the layers back together again. (I made this mistake, and it was not fun to fix.) 

4. If your seams aren't perfect, just wear a wide belt over the top and no one will know. Muahaha. 

A good "seamstress" is even better at hiding her mistakes. 

Here is a "before" shot of the seersucker dress. I didn't put it on because I couldn't actually zip it up over my ribcage, so I took the before shot while it was on a hanger. 

Before (Seersucker "dress"):

The top felt all crinkly. No me gusta.

After (seersucker skirt):

My "sort of" before picture of the striped silk dress:

You can see the top of the dress poking through the shirt. The problem? You can see the dress straight through the shirt. Plus, the top was still uncomfortable.

After (striped silk skirt):

One of my attempts to prevent myself from shopping is to refashion my unworn clothes. 

I think these two attempts were successful, and now I've been bitten by the sewing bug!

Do you have a favorite? If you think they look horrible, don't tell me. I want to float on my "I sewed something that's not falling off of me" cloud for awhile longer.