Recycled Jeans Wrap Skirt Tutorial: Part One of Three

This is a picture I lifted from the LLBean website. I made a wrap skirt which really does look much like this, minus the belt loops (and the tanned legs). Here is how you can make one, too.

First, gather up three pairs of old jeans. They will need to be close to your own size, or larger, to be sure you have sufficient fabric. The next step, I am sorry to tell you, is to measure the circumference of your waist, at the place where you would like the waist of your skirt to sit. If this depresses you, as it always does me, just remember that in a few hours you will have a cute new skirt to wear. This should cheer you up.

Multiply this waist measurement by one-and-a-half. Yes, it just got worse, but hang in there. Because you will be wrapping this skirt around, it will be double thickness in the back, so it needs to have fabric for the back, the front, and the back again. Make a note of this number, as well as your waist measurement, for later calculations.
Cut off the pant legs, and trim all the seams away. Set up your iron and press the twelve pieces of fabric which result. (You can see from the picture that I did the pressing later, but I learned better.)
Cut the trimmed pant legs into twelve wedges. You can do this with a straight edge and scissors if you don't have rotary stuff for cutting. The narrow end of each wedge should measure one inch more than one-twelfth the total number (waist measurement times one-and-a-half) you got above. The other end of each wedge should be as wide as possible. They need not match in bottom width, nor in length. You can even fudge a bit on the width of the top of the wedge a little, as I did, having some a little wider and others a little bit narrow. Wrap skirts are very forgiving.
Here are five of twelve wedges. Using all twelve wedges, sew these one to another with one-half-inch seams, keeping them evenly aligned at the narrow ends, like a fan. (See tutorial number two for a view of the results of following this step.)