Back to school always meant one thing to me: new clothes! But that can get expensive, as we all know. Even making your own clothes can be expensive these days, between expensive fabrics and designer patterns. And who wants to bother with a pattern anyway? I came across a solution to your back to school clothes problems. This adorable petal skirt is easy to make, it’s ridiculously cheap, and it will set you apart at school. All you need is a sewing machine, some rose petals from the dollar store (in the wedding section), and an old T-shirt or two (raid dad’s closet).

Total cost of this project: $2.60

Instructions:

1. First lay your T-shirt flat and cut off the bottom for your skirt piece. Cut a piece that’s long enough to make a skirt. It’s always a good idea to measure it against a skirt you already own that’s a length you like. Your skirt piece will be a tube that already has a hem, so you hardly have any work to do!

1. Sew the petals onto the skirt piece. I just placed one petal at a time and sewed them in a straight line, one next to the other.
2. 
3. Keep sewing and sewing and sewing (and sewing) until the whole tube is covered with petals. I sewed the top row upside down and ironed them down, so that the stitching wouldn’t show.
    
   

   Here they are all ironed down

4. Next, make a waist band. So far almost everything I’ve made has used an elastic waistband, so I wanted to branch out (a little!) and try to make a waistband out of just T-shirt material. First, I measured a pair of my pants that have a similar waistband.
   

   Remember gauchos?!

5. Next, cut more fabric from your thrifted T-shirt to use as your waistband. I made mine 6 inches wide (to ultimately make a 3 inch waistband). The length of your material is the length around your waist, or the length I measured from my gauchos!
   
6. Sew this fabric into a tube, then fold the tube in half over itself so that the wrong sides are facing each other.
   
7. Since my T-shirt was so large, my skirt piece was too big to fit around my waist, so I had to gather the top of it a bit. Sew a basting stitch all the way around the top of your skirt piece and pull the threads to gather it until the circumference of your skirt’s waist is the same as your waistband piece.
   
8. Position your skirt piece inside of the waistband so that the raw sides of the waistband and the gathered edge of the skirt are together, and the top of the waistband is facing down. Pin the waistband to the skirt.
   
9. Sew around the top of your skirt to attach the waistband to the skirt piece. Then flip the waistband right side up, remove the basting stitch (if it’s showing), and you’re done!
   

Karisa Tell is the editor of FaveCrafts.com, a crafting site with 1000s of free craft projects, home decor ideas and DIY tips. We add new projects and tips every day. Some of our readers’ favorites include Christmas Crafts, Free Knitting Patterns, Free Crochet Patterns and Crafting with Kids.