Hey look I made a tutorial. With illustrations.

Best garage sale find ever.  Orange corduroy pants, in my size, and they actually make me look like I have hips, which is impressive given that my hips are a little smaller than my waist, and a lot smaller than my bust.  The problem: fits at the waist, hips, legs, but 6" too long in the crotch.  I look like my pants are falling down even when they're all the way up. The answer is, of course, buy an awesome pair of $3 orange corduroy pants and turn them into an awesome orange corduroy skirt.

Most pants-to-skirt transformations I've seen look something like this:

If you do this, your friends will say, "hey cool did you make that?"  And if your friend is me, I will secretly judge you, because I do not like these skirts.

If you do it my way, people will say, "wait, really, you made that?"

(Note: this is only about the general construction.  I will not tell you to pin the right sides together or what kind of seams you should use.  I don't pin very much anyway, so you don't really want my advice on that.)

1.  Cut pants horizontally.  The top part is going to be kept as is, the bottom part is just material.  You want the top part to end in essentially a big tube, so make sure that you cut high enough over the crotch that the top lays flat.

Figure 1. Pants

Figure 2. Cut up

 2a.  Ignore the legs for now.  You should have a really, really, short miniskirt.  Possibly a very wide belt.  Decide how long you want your total skirt to be.  How much longer is that from the mini you currently have?  Write that number down, plus an extra 1" or so for seam allowance.  This is measurement A.

2b.  Measure the bottom edge of this miniskirt, add 1" or so for seam allowance, and write it down, too.  This is measurement B.

Figure 3.  measurements

3.  What you need now is a tube that is A tall and B around.  Now look at the leg pieces you have.  Cut each leg open so that it lays flat.  You can cut off any seams, they're just going to be annoying, and you won't want them in the finished skirt.  Unless you do, in which case, feel free.

Figure 4. turning legs into useful fabric

4.  Lay the fabric out flat.  Since I was working with corduroy, I wanted to work with the legs oriented up and down, so the nap of the fabric matched on top and bottom.  Start cutting rectangles that are A high.  You want to cut enough so that when sewn all together, with seam allowances, they measure B wide.

Figure 5. Cutting strips out of the legs.

5.  Sew the strips together into a tube.  Then sew the tube onto the bottom of your miniskirt.

Figure 6. Assembly.  The dotted lines on the bottom piece are where the rectangles are pieced together.

6. Wear.