Vintage Pillowcase Maxi Skirt for Girls

So I was scrolling through instagram the other day and I saw this picture.

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Immediately I knew that I had to make my girls some of these cute skirts. I already had a bunch of vintage pillowcases in my fabric stash, but I didn’t have any wide elastic. I checked at my local Walmart but there was no wide elastic to be found! It wasn’t until I was picking up some stuff at the dollar tree that i spied these elastic headbands. I gave them a good stretch in the store and figured that at 3 for $1 it was a pretty low risk purchase.

The first step in making these skirts was cutting the pillowcase down to the right length. For this I used a super sophisticated method of holding it up next to my daughter and marking the fabric at her waist area. I made sure to keep the open end of the pillowcase on the bottom and cut off the sewn side. This left me with a perfectly hemmed bottom edge!

The next step was probably the trickiest part of the whole thing. I pinned the right side of both materials together, connecting the seam of the elastic headband to the seam of one side of the pillowcase. Then I pinned the halfway point of the headband to the seam in the other side of the pillow case. I added one more pin in middle on on both sides. Now the pillowcase was significantly bigger than the headband so I had to pinch and fold the fabric as I went. In theory I could have pinched, folded and pinned it but I wasn’t concerned with creating prefect pleats so I just went with it. I sewed slowly around the entire edge with a long straight stitch so that there would be plenty of give on the thread and I wouldn’t have to worry about breaking open the stitches.

Once it was sewn all the way around I pulled out the pins, flipped it right side out and admired my handiwork! It was so easy I whipped up 5 in a row in less than an hour. My girls now have two sets of matching maxi skirts and it might be the cutest thing ever. They have decided that I should be making all of their clothes, which is cute! They have more faith in my sewing ability than I do. It is nearly impossible to take a picture of them being serious so here are a few of them being silly!