Trash Panda Sews It Up: The T-Shirt Mini-skirt

It's cold, and I find myself in need of a butt-warmer. A butt-warmer, much like a leg-warmer or arm-warmer, is a tube of material that covers the butt and butt adjacent areas to keep them warm. You could also call it a mini-skirt. Trash Panda had heard tales of people making such skirts out of shirts, and so the quest began.

CraftyCoup, may my cousins never tip over her trash can, made a post with instructions for how to make just such a butt-warmer with a sewing machine. And as she says in her post, it is very, very easy to make. But what if you don't have a sewing machine, or if you've never made a piece of clothing before? Fear not, Trash Panda will guide you.

Materials: 

• T-shirt
• Scissors, sharper is better
• Needle and thread
• Measuring thingy (measuring tape is good, ruler is ok)
• Elastic for the waistband 
• Tailor's chalk or pencil, or maybe just normal chalk

The Process: 

1) Find a shirt that's got: 

• Some stretch to it: It's a mini-skirt, it needs to be at least a little stretchy. That said, the heavier and stiffer the t-shirt fabric, the easier it will be to work with. It’s a trade-off.
• A hem that fits nicely around your buns, hips & upper thighs: Rather altering a big shirt down to size, find a shirt that's already a good fit for your butt. I figured out this out by trying shirts on and picking one that had a lower part of the shirt and hem fit nicely around my butt and the butt-adjacent areas I wanted to keep warm
• The right length: the length from armpit to hem of the shirt, minus some inches for butt and butt adjacent curves and the foldover for the waistband, is going to be the length of your skirt. 
• A fabric weight and color/ pattern you like
• Some miles on it: if you can't reuse something out of your own or a friend's closet, swing on by a thrift shop* 

2) Obtain an elastic loop of the correct size: 

Recycled elastic: The easiest way is to make a waistband is to re-use elastic that's already measured and sewn to your size. For my second skirt, I re-used the elastic waistband of a pair of leggings that wore out. 

New elastic: I bought a few yards of 1/2” wide elastic at the fabric store. You can buy thinner or thicker, just think about what you’ll find comfy to wear around your waist. I would buy extra: it's cheap, you might want to make more butt-warmers after your first one, and it's easier than making an extra trip or order if you fuck up your first attempt. 

Wrap the elastic around where you'd like the waistband of the skirt to be. I like my butt-warmers to sit a little lower, so I wrapped the elastic right around my the points of my hips. I made sure to pull the elastic tight enough to my skirt wouldn't slip off, but loose enough so I wouldn't be uncomfortable wearing it.

Mark the length, then cut an inch or two after the mark. This will give you enough extra length so you can overlap the elastic when you sew it into a loop. It'll hold up just fine if you hand sew it. I sewed the shape of a little box with an X in it for extra strength. You could do a zigzag instead if you want.

3) Cut the shirt just below the armpits, straight across

Rather than eyeball it, I used a yardstick as a guide and marked out the line I wanted to cut using some tailor’s chalk. I marked and cut both sides of the shirt separately, since it’s hard to just cut correctly through the whole thing at once and unless you’ve got some practice.  The cut end will be the end you fold over to make a sleeve, aka casing, for your elastic waistband. 

The hem end of the shirt will be the lower hem of your skirt. I safety pinned the hem end together, all the way across, to keep the fabric from wiggling everywhere and to make it easier for me to keep the bottom hem straight(ish) while I measured, pinned & sewed the waistband.

4) Make waistband

Turn the t-shirt bottom tube inside out, and lay it down flat. I hemmed the raw cut end of the t-tube, the first time by hemming it separately & the second time by folding the edge under when I sewed the casing. Since t-shirt fabric doesn't fray much when you cut it, I think this step is optional.

Shimmy the elastic over the cut end of the t-tube. Next, fold the fabric over the elastic to create the casing at least an inch and a half wide all the way round (here is where a measuring thingy and chalk is helpful).  Safety pin the elastic to the skirt at two opposite points to keep it from wiggling around. Then use straight pins to hold the casing in place. Since the waistband is generally of a smaller circumference than the skirt fabric, you’ll probably need to do some scooting and shuffling to distribute the extra fabric (and fabric wrinklies) evenly. Don’t sweat it too much, just don’t let it all bunch in one place.

The first time I did this, I fucked up cutting the skirt or hemming the raw end so had the choice to have an asymmetric skirt or to have varying casing width. I chose varying casing width.  After I pinned the casing, I carefully measured every few inches to make sure the skirt would end up the same length all the way around. There was a lot of tailor's chalk used at this point.

Once you have all the measurements done and the fabric and the elastic pinned in place, sew that puppy up. I didn't want to have to deal with stretchy jersey fabric in a sewing machine, so I hand sewed the casing. Use little stitches and (close to) matching thread like I did, and it'll look just fine.

For each side, I like sewing a few inches in the middle as an anchor point, and then working out from there to each of the safety pins keeping the elastic in place. I feel like it helps me keep the casing width consistent, and it helps me distribute the extra fabric more evenly rather than have it all bunch up in one spot on the waistband.

5) Put on your new rad, butt-warming t-shirt mini-skirt

Does it fit right? Is it the right length? If yes, good job! You did in one go! 

If not, it'll be either be easy to fix or toss it in the cleaning rags pile, grab another old t-shirt and try again.

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* You know, when it's safe.