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Okay so I want you to come along with me on this journey of a fat man's T-shirt. We are going to take this $5 Fruit of the Loom-Mart T-shirt in a size 4X, and turn it into the cutest Summer skirt West of the Mississippi. There are about to be a lot of pictures, and this is going to appear to be quite a process, but trust me when I say that this iseasy, fun, and the results are worth the few hours you will put into this. So just so you won't give up on me before we even start I'm going to show you the before and after, then I feel certain you'll stick along for the journey.Are you in? I am so in love with this project and am absolutely thrilled with the results. Believe me when I say I want one in every color. Okay so here's how you do it.First you'll need to find a skirt in your closet to use as a pattern. I used this skirt I bought a couple of summers ago at Kohl's. It's a jersey knit skirt and has a similar style to what I was going for.Now take your shirt and fold it in half. (Okay so if you're a skinny mini (I'm more on the round and squishy side) you may not need to buy the 4X, but just think about it this way, you might as well buy the shirt that has the most fabric on it -more bang for your buck. So I'd go ahead and order the.) Then place your skirt also folded in half on top of the shirt. Like this.Place the skirt pretty high up to the neck line of the shirt. You can put the waist line up high because you're going to create your waistline out of the bottom of this T-shirt, so you won't need to account for the waistline on top.Now you'll want to cut the bottom of the shirt off. I was able to get 8 inches, this will be used for the ruffle and the waistline. If you don't have a rotary cutter and mat you can do the same thing with some fabric scissors.Once you've cut the bottom off you need to angle another cut along the same line as your pattern skirt, like this. Then cut along that line as well.Once you make that angled cut you'll be left with two triangular shaped pieces that will become the front and back of your skirt. You should also have your 8 inch piece you cut off of the bottom.Next I took my 8 inch band from the bottom and cut it in half. The top half I used to make my ruffle and the bottom half with the hem I saved for my waistband.But don't get rid of those sleeves just yet. We'll need a 4 inch band off of each one of them to add to the piece for the ruffle. Basically cut the hem of the arm off, and then cut the part that goes by the arm and shoulder so that you have a 4 inch band, do this to both sleeves.Cut those bands to make two 4 inch wide strips of fabric. Now you're going to piece these together with the top half of your band that you cut off of the bottom of your shirt so that you have one long 4 inch wide strip. This will be used for the ruffle (but save the band with the hem line on it for your waist band).Before we can make the ruffle you'll want to hem one side of your ruffle strip. I just folded over a little bit and stitched that down, and folded again and stitched down again to make my hem. This is a horrible picture, but you get the idea. You don't have to fold it over twice because the T-shirt fabric won't fray, but I think it just gives it a more finished look if you do.Now for the ruffle.Okay so there are a few different ways to make a ruffle. I think some of you even have fancy presser feet that do all of the work for you. I don't have one of those, so I'm going to show you this trick that my Mom taught me. You will need some of this elastic cording. I got this also at-Mart for $0.97.Cut a piece of this cording that is the same length as your pieced together ruffle strip.Secure an end of this to theside of your ruffle strip by sewing across it.Then you're going toover the cord without stitching into it. Like this.See how I am stitching across, but not through it with astitch. You just kind of feed this in with your hand, and pull it snug from the other side, do this all along your ruffle strip edge.Once you've finished it should look like this all across the whole piece.Now you take the open edge of the elastic cord and pull, and gather your fabric as you go. This takes a little time, but you'll get the feel of it. You want your ruffle to be long enough to go around the whole bottom of your skirt so you just have to play with it until you get it long enough.Now you need to take your front and back piece and put them right sides together, pin, and sew up the edge seams. That's a lot of pins, I know, but when you're sewing this together you don't want your fabric to move, so better safe than puckered and sorry.Again, pin the heck out of it. It's a lot of pins, I know, but it will hold it all in place to assure that you have a nice stitch line. Make sure you are pinning the right sides together and that your bottom hem will fall inside of your skirt.Now head back to your sewing machine and sew the ruffle on. When you get all the way around the bottom of your skirt you'll need to sew the end seams of the ruffle together. Also make sure you are stitching along the bottom of the elastic cord so that thosestitches don't show on your finished skirt.Phew. This is looking very involved, but it's not. I just like to show each step of the process. But don't worry, we're almost done.Next up we're going to make our waistline. Take the 4 inch band we cut off of the very bottom of the skirt and try it onto your waist. Figure out how much of it you need to cut off to make it fit snugly, and then cut that off. Then take your two edges and sew them together to get a waist band. You're going to then take this waist band and sew it onto the top of your skirt. Again with the pinning, I know, but trust me that you're going to want to put a lot of pins to hold it in place while you sew.Once you've sew on the waist band you're done! That wasn't so bad, right? I even ironed the skirt so you could see how cute it turns out and you don't have to look at my wrinkled fat man's T-shirt anymore!Okay so disclosure here: I don't like full body pictures. Mostly because I don't have the cutest full body. Remember the round and squishy discussion we had earlier? Not to mention that my legs haven't seen the sun in 9 months, but I wanted you to somewhat see how cute it looks on. So I had Dallas snap a photo.What do you think? Are you going to try this? I think you should, and I think I need a few more fat men's T-shirts to project runway-up some more skirts. Let me know if you give this a try. Like I said, I didn't invent anything about this, I'm just showing you my take on it. I've seen a lot of skirts in blog land that use T-shirts for waistbands, I just figured I might as well use the whole shirt. Check out my sister Katie's cute shirt turned skirt here. P.S. This is the same way I made Hallie's skirt, only instead of using a T-shirt I used fabric.I'm linking up!