Fresh Wave of Creativity Part 4: Jeans remixed- Perfecting My Pleats

I now have a long piece of "fabric" made up of my denim strips which measures 70 inches long, and my waistband base which measures 40 inches around. How to make it fit? My answer (at least for now) is to pleat the fabric so that it will lose the inches that are too many around the top, while not sacrificing the flowing, pretty volume around the bottom. I divided 70 by 40 and came up with 1.75. So, I marked my fabric every 1 & 3/4 inches along the length of it:

Once it was marked, I paired the sets of lines right sides together with each other, putting the extra "fold" of fabric on the wrong side. I then sewed about an inch downward to make the pleat hold:





When all of the pleats were in, I set the right side edges of the fabric and base together and sewed them. The result was exactly as I expected it to be:

There are 2 sides to this now: 1st, I have achieved my goal! The jeans are now a skirt! However... the flip side is that it is too short-easily fixed by adding more strips to the bottom edge before making a hem line. And, more importantly, when I tried it on, it wasn't exactly flattering. The pleats fall right at my hip line and make me look a little wider than I'd like. I think I'm going to take the pleats out and sew the panels from the front center of the base towards the back. This means I will have to call on my very best sewing friend, Mr. Seam Ripper, to pull out some of the panels. I may leave a few pleats to add some volume around the bottom. I'll keep on playing with it. But at least it's a skirt.