Tutorial: Make a Cute Skirt from an Ugly Christmas Sweater

Can an ugly Christmas sweater ever be turned into something cute? If so, this is an easy way to get a new skirt! If not, well, I've devised a way to wear ugly sweaters all over your body.

Thrift stores are full of ugly holiday & Cosby sweaters (although the biggest and smallest stores tend to mark up the prices around the holidays). I found a sweater with a wide boat neck and thought it'd be fun to make into a skirt.

This technique can be used to turn many kinds of shirts into skirts. Depending on the fabric, consider leaving the sleeves partially intact and turning in to become pockets.

Making a Skirt from a Sweater

1. Cut off the sleeves. If you like, you could stop here. Your ugly sweater has become an ugly sweater vest! Cut across the shoulders to widen the neck/waistline if yours isn't as big as mine.

2. Create a skirt shape. I laid a skirt that fits me well over the top, and cut the sweater to the same shape (similar to my old sweater dress tutorial). Consider the differences in fabric between the two skirts and how stretchy your sweater might be. Either way, leave yourself a little room for seam allowances. You can always take it in if need be.

3. Stitch up the sides.  I'm a little afraid that sweater fluff will gunk up my serger, so I used my regular machine. Is this a legitimate fear? Either way, if you don't have a serger, a zigzag stitch will do the trick.

At this point, since the original sweater had a boatneck and was quite stretchy, I called it done. Most sweaters will probably call for some kind of elastic waistband. If you choose to add one, it's easy to do!

Adding a belt helps polish this look, especially if the elastic gets bunchy or the neckline looks more like a neckline than a waistline. You could even make a belt out of the sleeves of the sweater. Or, use the sleeve to make something like this wine bottle gift wrap. Congratulations! You're all ready to rock the ugly sweater parties in a new way this year.