I Made An Umbrella Skirt!

I've been wanting to do this for ages and have got quite a collection of broken umbrellas waiting for transformation into something useful again. Any windy, rainy day and they're easy to find on a stroll around the city, sticking out of bins, blowing about the park or flapping on the beach.

Today I did it! Took a couple of those old umbrellas and did something with them! The result is not going to win any fashion shows and I was too impatient to iron it (it really does need ironing!) but I improvised a design, spent a couple of hours cutting and sewing and figuring it out and it kind of works.

The fabric is 100% upcycled umbrella, actually two umbrellas as I decided to alternate the polka dots with a plain black. Then I added a waistband of purple ribbon with some elastic inside. Part of the front black triangle is left open (kind of a wrap, with another one beneath) so that it's not tightly restrictive... for climbing over fences and running and dancing, because skirts can sometimes be stupid and stop you doing stuff like that.



Yes, it does need ironing!

An umbrella skirt also has the advantage of being waterproof so that you don't have to worry so much about Autumn picnics and wet patches on the grass or mossy logs or damp benches... Also, I guess a waterproof skirt might be useful if you're prone to laughing so much that you p.... Actually I haven't done that for a very long time!

All this was so satisfying that I may not ever buy clothes from a shop again!  ;-)  Hmm, there's an old tent waiting in my bedroom that I found abandoned on the beach a few months ago. Now, what could that be...

There are some beautiful umbrella upcycling ideas here by some very clever people: http://www.crookedbrains.net/2011/03/creative-cool-reuses-umbrellas.html