You already know one of my favorite reFind Projects is the pencil skirt. And with a good knit, it really is one of the easiest and most flattering items of clothing you can make. This project was inspired when I found this great gray and black stripped turtle neck at the thrift store. The softness and stretch of it is so unbelievably comfortable I wanted to use everything that I could. So I decided on a super high waisted design using the neck…..of the turtle? How ever the best way to say it is, here is what it looked like after I removed the sleeves, but before I made any other changes.

As you can see it was more of a tunic style already, but wasn’t very exciting. For this design, the first thing I check is if there is enough room for my hips between the sleeves. This is ideal as then you can use the entire length of the shirt, other wise you will be working with just under the armpits, which can make for cute minis. In this case there was room, so then I checked if there was stretch enough to leave the neck intact and use it as the waist. If you have either a top that’s too small to stretch like that, or it doesn’t have much of a neck you can make your waist band from the sleeves.  But like I said this shirt was the ideal so I just laid it all out flat, right sides together and stitched the side seams, starting at the neck, rounding slightly for the hips while closing the armholes and tapering into the already existing seam towards the bottom. I used an over locking stitch specific for stretch fabric, but a zig zag is great too, setting it at a wide width and mid range length should leave plenty of give. I’d love to see yours.