Wednesday 23 October 2013

Turn a tee into a hula skirt

As a kid I had a big box of dress-ups. Once of my favourite items was a grass hula skirt that I would spend days wearing, pretending to have dance skills and swishing around in.

When my friend and I got sick of this we would put the skirt on our head, the elastic fitted perfectly around our temples. We'd flick it back and voila! We had beautiful blonde hair. 

I can't remember why we were so obsessed with having this fake long, blonde, straw-ish  hair but we loved it. That skirt was the most treasured dress-up item in our house. 

So when I was asked to be one of 10 bloggers to take a blue UNICEF T-shirt and up-cycle it into  something a child can make or use, the first thing that popped into my head was a hula skirt / fake blue hair. 

First up, apologies for the not-so-great pics. I've been contemplating a new camera but am still deciding whether to go the DSLR route or towards one of those faux DSLR that still take good pics. Any recommendations welcomed. 

Here we go!

How to make a hula skirt from a (UNICEF) t-shirt



Firstly cut off the t-shirt just under the arms. You could use the arm bits to make mini hula skirts for your teddy bears! Cute!


Fold over the top by about an inch, or measure for your elastic. Sew along to create your elastic casing. If a kid is making, they can just use needle and thread if you don't have a sewing machine.


Oh wait - now it's a cute skirt! I actually stopped at this point and thought 'Gosh this would be adorable for a little girl'. You could then use Kate's potato stamping to create a really cute pattern on it.


On with the hula skirt! Cut the skirt into strips, whatever width you'd like. Volia! One hula skirt / pretend blue hair!


This project was to support UNICEF Day for Children, which raises funds for UNICEF's Schools for Asia program, to help kids across Asia go to school. 57 million kids miss out on their right to an education each day and this program addresses the barriers and helps get kids in school. 

1 comment:

  1. I love this project. It's so not what I thought you'd do either. I think this will be a side project next time my niece is in town. She'll love it.

    ReplyDelete