The skirt above started out as the classic men’s oxford below.

This shirt was free to me, it was rejected for sale at the thrift shop where I volunteer due to a frayed collar and cuffs. The shirt is made by Gant and retailed for $135.00 when new. It’s very well made and although I’ve never heard of Gant before, I will look for this brand in the future because of it’s excellent quality. Even though this shirt must have been worn often in order to have a frayed collar and cuffs, it was in excellent condition otherwise.

To start my refashion I cut off the shirt sleeves, collar stand/collar and the back double yoke. As you can see in the photo above, the inside back yoke had an embroidered Gant logo. I thought this would be a cute design feature on the skirt waistband, so I put this piece aside to serve as my back waistband. I cut off the side seams on the body of the shirt and sleeves and removed the sleeve cuffs so that I had flat fabric pieces to work with. Using my TNT skirt pattern Simplicity 5149, I arranged the pattern pieces on the shirt fabric. I was able to fit all the main pattern pieces, but not the facings, so I sorted thru my fabric collection for matching/coordinating fabric. Surprisingly, although my eye sees this shirt as a light blue, it’s actually a chambray with a dark green warp. So fabrics I perceived as matching didn’t actually match! After rejecting my light blue solids and prints I decided to try to coordinate with the Gant logo instead which led me to a madras look plaid in red, grey, green and brown. A little Christmassy looking but it worked well as the facing.

I traced out the entire skirt front pattern piece (designed to be cut on folded fabric) so I would have the whole skirt pattern front instead of just half of the front. Because of the buttons down the front of the shirt, the fabric was impossible to accurately fold in half. And I thought it would be an interesting design feature to keep the buttons on the front of the skirt. Since Simplicity 5149 has a waistband and fastens with a side zipper I just sewed the button placket closed. Since the shirt had so many leftover buttons I added 3 buttons across the front waistband and 4 additional buttons across each pocket. I think that was just my thriftiness: “If I have them I’m going to use them” kicking in. The zipper was gifted from my best friend’s Mom, the facing fabric was a leftover remnant from another project, and the shirt was free, so this skirt cost me exactly zero:)