Wrap Conversion Skirts

I am very interested in upcycling and I have some wraps I no longer use since my youngest rarely wants up now and if he does I always use a carrier.  The wraps are still useful and beautiful fabric and has lots of memories too so why not reuse them to create something beautiful I can use? I have been experimenting with some skirt patterns.  The wrap fabric is harder to sew than regular woven fabric (because of the diagonal stretch which makes them so nice for babywearing) so I have had mixed results so far.  I have experimented with a wrap skirt and an A-line bias skirt.

Wrap Skirt

The wrap skirt is a half circle skirt so it is nice and twirly!  The skirt I made was lined and I think this helped to make the skirt drape really well and made the skirt reversible - bonus! Since I used a medium weight rayon for the lining though it made the skirt quite warm.  It would be great for winter. I wanted to wear this in summer though and as the lining didn't match quite as well as I though it would I decided to remove it.  I think in the future I will only use a lightweight fabric for lining (or no lining) unless I am specifically making a skirt for winter.

Wrap skirts would work well with a light to medium weight wrap which drapes well.  A heavier wrap would probably work better as an A line or perhaps as a less full wrap skirt.  This wrap skirt also used up a lot of wrap since woven baby wraps are narrower than store bought fabric - slightly more than 4.2m so I think I size 5 would work best for this kind of wrap skirt.  There would be a lot of small scrap pieces left over too to do something fun with.  

​A Line Chevron Skirt 

This skirt was made from a Girasol Wrapper's Paradise.  I love the colours! The wrap was quite stained and worn (bought cheaply from ebay).  I got most of the stains off but I still needed to cut around some, and it was certainly not suitable for anything weight bearing so I thought I would try to make a chevron skirt.

 I am happy with how it turned out even if it was a bit of a disaster at first! The bias cut gave the seams of the skirt too much stretch which made it difficult to put the zip in. This is a fairly common problem in bias cut skirts. I tried recommended ways to reduce this - letting the skirt hang for a few days, using interfacing and then bias tape but nothing would allow the zip to lay flat. I altered the fit at the top of the skirt halfway through sewing (the waist was too big when I tried it on so I took it in at the side seams and I may have taken a little bit too much off perhaps) although I suspect it really was the fabric and not my alterations which caused the problem. Since wraps already have a good amount of diagonal stretch already (that's why they are so comfortable for babywearing) cutting on the bias may have added a little too much.  

It worked out in the end anyway as I added lacing and I think that looks rather pretty!  The lacing and the panel underneath has added the advantage of making the skirt quite flexible in size.