How to cut a hi-lo or asymmetrical hem in a dress or skirt

Asymmetrical hem

Asymmetrical hems are turning up on dresses, skirts, T-shirts and shirts.

They are also called high low skirts, fishtail skirts or mullet skirts. Although these hemlines are typically – a curved edge raised in the middle, higher in front and lower at the back – I’ve seen that effect reversed where the hem is longer in the middle and shorter at the sides, also called a tulip hem.
And . . . . I’ve seen diagonal hemlines – higher on the left and lower on the right.

In this revamp I wanted a high front, low back curved hem and set about modifying this T-Shirt dress. It was a bit too long and I’ve been wanting to experiment with hi-lo look.

The dress before

First I cut a pattern for the hem from an old newspaper to make sure I cut the hem evenly. Cutting a hem free hand is risky. And I cut longer than I wanted at first. Then fitted the dress to see exactly where the hemline fell.

I pinned where I wanted the hem to be and cut away more hem bit by bit. Why so cautious? You can always cut away more – but you can’t add fabric back after it has been cut.

The nice thing about this dress is that it’s a cotton knit and a non curly cotton knit as well. So I left the hem raw. On another fabric you would have to sew a hem to neaten the edge after you had reshaped the hemline.

Cutting a pattern for the curve from an old newspaper

You can try this on a longer length dress or skirt you already have in your wardrobe or find such a skirt at your local charity shop to restyle.

Here – is a link to a similar DIY by Geneva. Love her blog and love her DIY’s.

For more ideas to revamp and restyle your older clothes visit the Greenie Galleries at the top of this page.


And you can share what you have made on the Greenie Dresses for Less facebook page. 

Next week I show how I used the rest of the recycled glass beads from – this post.

See you soon.

Greenie.