I hate to admit it, but we bought this maxi skirt for my youngest at least 2 months ago. It was too long and my youngest decided instead of hemming it, we should make it into a strapless dress. I couldn’t imagine a 5 year old playing modestly in a strapless dress for very long, so it went into the alteration pile and sat… and sat, and sat…

Right. Anyhow. I just got an amazing new sewing machine (more on that soon when I can give it a proper review) and had a burst of creative energy where I actually wanted to work on my mending and hemming. I can’t remember a machine ever making me want to do that before!

So, among the projects, out came the maxi skirt… After searching a bit in my knit stash I found an old t-shirt that was a pretty close match for the light blue. The length of the straps are measured from her Annabelle maxi dress. The same place I got the idea for the how to make the straps.

Here are 5 quick steps so you can do it too!

Step 1: Cut 2 rectangles – about 5″ wide (includes 1 inch for hemming) by the length you would like + 1 inch

Step 2: Fold in and press about 1/2″ along each long edge. Stitch to hem the edges.

Step 3: Baste a line about 1/2″ from each short edge. Pull the threads to gather to your desired width.

Step 4: Mark the strap placement on the front and back of the skirt top and pin each strap in place along the gathered edges. The top of the skirt should overlap with the straps by about 1/2″.

Step 5: Stitch them on (indicated by the red lines below), I made 2 lines of stitching to make sure they were secure.

All finished! Yup, it’s that simple. LOVE working with knits!

Of course,my daughter was in bed because I’m doing a lot of night-working this summer, so I hung it on her dresser where she could see it when she woke up. You should have seen the grin.

Argh, why do I wait so long to make the things I plan for them?!

How about you?What is one of your favorite mending/refashioning projects?

Thanks for reading. Follow along and join me for “thread ride”!