What to do with (free) Jeggins!

I love the look when my daughters where a long tunic / dress top with Jeggins!  So cute! But, they're 3 & 4...so, it IS cute.  But, I'm sorry, a 30+ woman just can't usually pull this off.  Sure, I've seen it done...but, it's just not me.  I tried real hard to make Jeggings work, but my husband just said "What's with the moo moo and sweat pants, did 1994 throw up?" Not to mention, that I'm just not the moo moo type.

BUT I got a pair of jeggings free from Target, they were on clearance for $4.98 and I had a $5.00 off any denim coupon...so....Oh, I just can't pass up a deal. 

After wearing my circus-tent-with-poles look for about an hour, I realized I needed to figure out a way to turn these into something more wearable.  Ta Da!

Here's what I did to get one scarf/vest and one skirt from 1 free pair of pants!

First, lay out your pants facing you and really smooth them out.  Then cut straight across, just above the crotch.  My first cut wasn't very straight, but there's a chance to fix it later...

Next, take away the longer ends, and seperate the inside seams.  I cut very close to the seam so that I was keeping as much fabric as possible.  Then cut the cute decorative end off the bottoms of each leg.  You should now have two Long and tapered rectangles. 



Then, with right sides together, line up seams and sew the smaller (bottom) ends together.  Now you have a funny looking wide at the ends smallerish in the middle scarf.

Wrap this around you and make sure the ends are even.  Then (and this sounds more difficult than it is) pull the sides behind you so that they touch in back, put a hair clip, or clothes pin, or something to mark where the ends come together.

Pretty much, you are going to end up sewing a straight line through the curve that was left from the crotch area...

Then I glued the decorative stiched bottoms onto the front ends of the vest...See! You should know that the back is open. I don't know how to overcome that.

And now for the skirt!

The top of the Jeggings which you had already cut off, are pretty much your "yoke" now.  I had to straight off the cut.  You are going to want to make sure that there's now curve where the crotch was.  I was affraid of cutting off too much, but really it ended up being better to have the yoke be thinner than thicker.
Next, I used a black tee shirt that my husband didn't wear any more...this was an XL and for sure you are going to want to find the largest size shirt you can find.  Any color you want, but since my jeggings were such a dark wash, I chose black...plus, that's kinda all I could find in my stash. 
Cut the tee shirt below the arm pits...now you have a tube with a finished edge.  You are going to want to think about overall length here. I actually made my skirt way too long for my tastes the first time and had to wrip the seam and shorten the t-shirt tube.  Think about how long the yoke is, and then how much skirt you want down from that...remembering you'll need room for a seam. 

Mark the middle point and the side points of your tube.

Turn your Yoke inside out, put the tube through the yoke, so you have right sides together and the top of the tube lines up with the bottom of the yoke. 

Line up the side points and pin to place. Work towards the middle pinning all the way around...You want to pin from the sides toward the middle of both the front and back.  You will have more t-shirt than yoke, you want the extra fabric to be in the middles.  Pin pleats in place (I had two 1/4 inch pleats on either side of the center seam on both the front and back.  (I'm sorry I didn't take a picture of this, this is really hard to explain in words!)

When you sew, pull on the fabric while sewing since the jeggings are stretchy.

Then voila! You have a skirt!

Add a coordinating shirt, and boots and you're ready to wear those Jeggings with confidence!