Stretchy Paneled Skirt Refashion

I've gotten into a bit of a crafting mood lately, largely thanks to Pinterest, and one of my first projects was to turn a large, ugly red garment into a cute, fitted skirt with black side panels.  I don't really know what the proper description of the original piece of clothing would be.  It sort of looks like a skirt and jacket pair, but they were connected into a sort of dress by a satin lining.  I picked it up at a Salvo thinking that we might be able to use it for a costume for a picture, but it didn't end up working out.  Instead of just throwing it away or re-donating it and wasting the money I had spent, I decided to refashion it into something wearable.

This was the original garment.  Actually, I had already cut the skirt off when this picture was taken, but I arranged it back inside so that I could have a "before" picture of how ugly it really was.

Then I had to slave away with my seam ripper to remove the lining that had attached the skirt to the top portion of the red thingy.  I hate using the seam ripper more than anything.  It's incredibly tedious and usually means that you screwed something up.  Then I took the side seams off of the skirt so that I had two rectangular pieces of fabric.

I was getting rid of this stretchy tank top because it's too big (!) for me now and also I never really liked the way it looked with anything I paired it with.  As you can see, I also forgot to take a "before" shot of this one, but this is what the front originally looked like.  I cut the back of the tank top off using the ribbing as a guide to make it as straight as possible.  Then I folded it in half hot dog style and cut it down the center so that I had two panels.

I free-handed all of the cuts and measurements, so I'm sure a lot of the seams are crooked.  I measured my waist to see how large I should make the skirt and then subtracted an inch since I didn't want to mess with buttons, zippers, or a drawstring.  The natural stretch of the black fabric is enough to hold the skirt up.  Then I trimmed the red cloth using the same fold-it-in-half-and-hope-for-the-best method that I used on the tank top.  If you look closely at the little diagram I made on the sheet of paper, you will see why I shouldn't attempt to do math in the middle of the night.  I had to take in the side seams after I put the skirt together because it was way too big.  It caused the side panels to be slightly narrower than I had originally intended, but everything worked out in the end.

Once everything was cut, I started sewing.  I pinned one side panel to the front section of the skirt and made a straight seam.  I kept the original hems on both garments so that I didn't have to deal with hemming it myself, so I started at the bottom and stitched toward the top of the skirt so that any unevenness caused by the stretchy fabric could be trimmed and hidden by the waistband.  Then I pieced the next panel in, and finally added the back of the skirt.

Because I used straight cuts, when I tried it on, I found that the back of it had an awkward gap that didn't fit me well.  I decided to add a pair of darts onto the front to eat up some of the loose fabric.  I decided where I wanted to place the first one and then used the fold-it-in-half method with the aid of a tape measure to make the lines for the darts symmetrical.

You can sort of see the darts that I traced out in this picture.  I don't own any actual fabric chalk, so I used this awesome purple marker that I love.  I wouldn't recommend doing this.  Then I sewed the darts and finished the skirt by folding down the top and sewing a waistband.

Ta da!  Now I just need somewhere to wear it.  I had been hoping that it could be a work skirt, but it turned out a bit too short for that.