The Gardening Skirt

Over the up coming year I would like to refashion more clothing for myself instead of sending all the good stuff to the shop. I thought about this a lot before Christmas and came up with the idea of challenging myself to refashion a random item of clothing to see what I could come up with. The trouble with that idea though is that I know myself too well. I knew I would avoid the overly tricky or ugly pieces and pick something within my comfort zone. So I enlisted the help of my husband, handed him £5 and explained my idea. I told him that anything went and that he should pick whatever he wanted.

What a bloody stupid idea that was.

He came back with the swamp green monstrosity you see above. He thought this was funny for several reasons.
1) I hate army surplus gear and like crocs, cannot fathom why anyone would want to wear them willingly.
2) I hate khaki green even more than army surplus gear. It's the colour of sludge or what you get when you mix all the Play Doh colours together. In short, this is not the sort of thing I would want in my wardrobe.

Now as this is my first refashion for the blog, I made some school girl errors. Number one was forgetting to get a good picture of me wearing the awful thing. I'm going to put that down to being too busy trying to figure out what the hell to do with it.

In the end I went with a tube skirt and then thought "hey no problem! I can dye it black and it will actually look really good!" School girl error number two.

Always, always read the label first my friends. Preferably before you've spent money on fabric dye and stuck it all in the washing machine.

As you can see, the patches took just fine. However the disgusting swampy green laughed in my face and stayed swampy green. Brilliant. At this point I had to concede defeat with the colour. Due to the fabric being acrylic no dye or bleach would make any difference. Weirdly however, it was the green that led me to come up with my next idea.

During these cold and often wet winter months, getting outside in the garden can be a bit of a chore. I realised I could make myself a warm skirt that would add an extra layer of warmth to my legs while I'm out getting the garden spring ready. Not just that, but I could make pockets with the patches to keep my phone or secateurs in. Now you're talking!

So on with the refashion. I simply cut the jumper width ways underneath each arm and then put it on to measure it. I wanted it to have a snug fit, but with some stretch so I ended up pinning it in a bit.

Even the cat doesn't seem to be amused with me cutting this thing up. Am I the only one who doesn't like it as it is??

And this is where I forgot to take photos of the next few steps. Trust me though, they happened.

I made a waistband using strips from the sleeves and 1" wide elastic.

I unpicked the patches from the arms to make the pockets and placed them on the sides of the skirt as I wanted to be able to move and bend freely so the pockets had to be out of the way! I also made the pockets deep and asymmetrical so that anything I might have in them won't fall out when I bend down. These got pinned and stitched in place and then et voila! I have a new gardening skirt!

It's still that stupid swampy colour so I'm sure my husband will feel he's won something there, but hey ho. It's a refashion I'm proud of, it will get some real use and I can hand on heart say that it is now a part of my wardrobe!