Paint? What Paint?

I had a kid-sized purple T-shirt that I brought to a Wardrobe Refashion Camp I taught last summer. The idea was that someone could make something out of it, but one of the kids used it as a rag to wipe up some spilled fabric paint. I kept it. Why? I have no idea - maybe the answer explains why my sewing room is so filled with junk supplies that I can never find anything. But I digress. . .

I actually found a use for the paint-smeared T-shirt. I turned it inside out (so the paint was on the inside - did I mention it was bright orange?) and made a skirt out of it. I cut some of the rest into strips, ruffled them, and stitched them on over the hem so you couldn't tell it was inside-out. And voila! A comfy new skirt for Jo and one more bit of fabric removed from the teetering piles.

If you want to know how to do the ruffling, you can find directions in this pattern from Maya*Made. I didn't follow her instructions for the skirt construction - just chopped it off at the armpits, folded the top down for an elastic casing and was done - this was a paint-smeared T-shirt after all! But I loved her technique for adding ruffles and it was the perfect way to cover the exposed hem.

By the way - the ruffles were even cuter and more ruffly after it went through the wash. :-)