This post is all about thrift-flipping or upcycling a regular men’s shirt into a cute larme or girly style skirt inspired by Liz Lisa and Otome no Sewing!
Since Joann’s has closed, I have been more mindful of fabric sources, and I found this old faded hole-y shirt of my brother’s in the donate pile. It was the perfect source of 100% cotton fabric already in black to make myself a larme-kei skirt as I promised in my recent larme post. I had a Liz Lisa skirt I bought a few years ago that I love wearing but it’s just a little tight on my waist, and I used it as my inspiration, along with a similar ryousangata suspender skirt from Otome no Sewing volume 17.
Here is the black shirt with French cuffs that my brother could no longer fit and also has a couple of holes, all cut up along the seams and ready to be recycled into something way better. Unlike previous makes I was not interested in keeping the seams or existing structure, so I just cut off the seams, no seam ripping here. This shirt is made of 100% stripe-textured cotton, with stripes running up and down except on the back yoke where it ran horizontally.
This is my inspiration, an existing Liz Lisa skirt from 2021 (Hem Scallop Peplum Skirt – no longer on their website) and also Otome no Sewing volume 17. Both skirts have front lacing detail and back elastic and moderately gathered skirt, although the Liz Lisa skirt has more ruffles and lacey trims with a solid scallop hem trimmed with lace underneath.
Here is my completed skirt, finished in a few nights over a couple of weeks. I didn’t have enough fabric to make a fuller gathered skirt since it was a medium men’s shirt, so this is just a pencil skirt, with partially shirred back, made of 4 panels from the main shirt and long sleeves. The waist band was sewn from remaining shirt scraps and backed with black lining satin from Michael’s clearance bin, I referenced the Otome no Sewing directions to insert the 2 elastic rows. I did the (semi-functional) front corset lacing like the Liz Lisa skirt, trimmed with black cotton lace and 3 grommets on each side and tied with satin ribbon. The seams of the front of the skirt were covered with beading lace that hung a little below the bottom hem for a garter effect like many larme and ryousangata skirts. Then I combined 2 lace trims (cotton cluny and raschel) to trim the waistband though I didn’t have enough to trim the elastic section in the back, it was left plain. I technically have enough shirt scraps to make like uhh… one and half suspender strap but I likely won’t wear suspender straps so I skipped that for now. I also skipped making hidden pockets because those are a pain to finish the cut edges and a mini skirt probably doesn’t need big old pockets. The last thing I have left is attaching a lacey bottom hem like on the inspiration skirt, but the only suitable lace I had was fragile and not quite enough, plus I don’t know if I’d wear it often if it was that fussy to wash.
Right now the skirt is exactly as frilly as I like it, without being too high-maintenance due to the French seams and covered raw edges. It fits fine and is comfortably loose, although it is a bit short without wearing leggings underneath, the bottom hem hits my fingertips which would be perfectly fine if I was a youngster but not when I’m this ancient. Also the vertical lace is pulling on the fabric on either side, you can tell my machine sewing down the edges ended up a little crooked and maybe wrong tension close-up. Sewing down that trim might have been served better by hand-sewing, but I just wanted to finish the skirt asap, plus you can barely tell black on black. All in all, I consider this a success having been 90% made of thrifted cotton and existing scraps! As long as you have enough fabric to go around the widest part of your hips plus a little more for sitting ease, you can make a skirt from a shirt in a few days and just decorate it how you want. No need to wait for someone to resell their brand skirt (that won’t fit unless you’re super thin), no need to buy new fabrics.
Let me know if you want to see more upcycled J-fashion items like this in the future!