Make a Running Skirt from your Race Tshirts

August 18, 2015 by trailbrat 6 Comments

Turn your race shirts into a running skirt.

This year I was fortunate enough to become an ambassador for Ultra Adventures. If you haven’t heard of them yet, check them out! Race director, Matt Gunn, puts on some well thought out courses in some spectacular places. All of his races occur in an area referred to as the Grand Circle, a vast region located in the Southwestern United States. The Grand Circle includes portions of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Nevada and includes America’s largest concentration of national parks and monuments.

I was set this year to run all seven races included in Ultra Adventure’s Grand Circle Series and wanted to do something fun with the race shirts. After some thought, I came up with the idea to turn all seven shirts into a (single) running skirt, I made my first skirt out of some random shirts I purchased from the thrift store.

A circle skirt made with random tshirts.

I liked the skirt style and it was a lot of fun to wear while running in Zion. So, I decided to put something together using actual race shirts. This required figuring out how to keep the desired, important portions of the shirts during the skirt’s assembly. For my second and third skirts, I used race shirts from Siskiyou Out Back. I had race shirts from 1999-2014.

Running skirt made from Siskiyou Out Back race shirts from 1999-2008.

Running skirt made from Siskiyou Out Back race shirts from 2009-2014

After these three skirts, I felt confident to tackle making an Ultra Adventures skirt. Below I’ve included some instructions on how I put together my Ultra Adventures skirt.

• After deciding how long I wanted the skirt, I created my pattern based on the following chart from https://wkdesigner.wordpress.com/2007/08/22/3-in-1-skirt-pattern/3-in1-skirt-pattern/

I made my basic circle skirt pattern using this chart.

• The pattern above gave me a half circle and since I would be assembling seven different race shirts, I added one of the volunteer shirts to make an even eight panels. This would mean four panels on each half. I therefore, divided the pattern into fours and traced the new smaller pattern on to each shirt giving a 3/8″ seam allowance on the sides of each panel.

Getting a visual on the shirt arrangement before beginning to cut.

Cutting out a single panel. Including 3/8″ seam allowance on the side of each panel.

• Sew each panel together.

Assembly of one half of the skirt.

• Add a waist band and J’ai fini (I’m done!)

Ultra Adventures skirt