Denim Skirts Are Not Extinct

Patches are in and I'm here for it. 

A V hot place for patching is on denim skirts. Usually I am not one to condone denim skirts making any sort of comeback. I think this is because they remind me of puberty and the god awful middle school outfits I put together that my parents somehow let me leave the house in (I still shudder when I think about the pair of white leggings I owned). You can confirm this disgust for jean skirts with my mom who has been asking me for years if she can start wearing them again. Although my answer has always been a hard "no", the 90s girl in me is finally going to give in. As long as a high waist and some flair is involved, I can be persuaded. 

Denim skirts with good flair;

After searching the internet high and low for the perfect patched skirt I found this incredible glitzy dino number. I may hate on denim skirts but I love bedazzled dinosaurs. Since I wasn't about to spend $60+ on a freaking denim skirt with sequin dinosaurs, that I can probably only get away with wearing on like maybe 3 occasions if I'm lucky, I figured it would make for a easy/fun DIY project. 

The first order of business was finding a cheap and not totally heinous denim skirt. My first thought was to venture into the shit show that is Forever 21. Naturally, I found the overly crammed, completely unorganized, denim skirt rack right up at the front ready to be ransacked. 

I went for the same look as the Topshop version and the skirt I found was a steal at $15.

Apparently this skirt is a part of the "denim collection" which I guess makes it fancier than the regular Forever 21 denim? The tag is slightly nicer than the cheap dirty looking white tag that I normally associate with F21, which makes it less likely for people to tell that you actually shopped at Forever 21. However, the giant neon yellow plastic bag is always a dead give away. 

Needless to say, as I walked out of the store after this purchase, I quickly shoved the enormous vomit yellow bag into my purse so people at the Cherry Creek mall wouldn't know I was trashy.

For the patches, I ordered these off Etsy, but there are also tons of other really cute options if dinos aren't your thing.

Then I just machine stitched them onto the skirt. I pinned the patches where I wanted them and used black thread to sew around the shape of each patch. My patches were iron on, but I wanted to make sure they were secure, you could also go that route and make it an even easier project.

This is what my skirt ended up looking like. I wanted it to be less over the top so I decided against the sequin pockets like the Topshop inspiration, although I do wish I had one more dinosaur on each side, but with this particular skirt and the size of the patches they wouldn't have fit. I might eventually get a longer skirt and try again with a different patch theme.

I did give the skirt a whirl at the Denver Zoo while the Dino exhibit was in town, and I got one whole compliment from a sweet grandmother, so I'd say it was overall a success. 

Dinosaurs IRL