This skirt once was a plain but well-made cotton drill skirt which was going begging so I gave it a new lease on life by adding assorted silk and linen stripes using waste fabric.

I get a fantastic sense of satisfaction from making something out of not much, living a more creative and meaningful existence. Those words are straight out of the mouth of Kevin McCloud in his Seaside Shack series on ABC1.

Kevin said making something fresh out of not much is rather fun. Upcycling is an adventure into our imagination – and the experience of making things is powerful and enriching.

“The pleasure is in the making and doing, not buying and consuming,” Kevin said. “Making things with your hands, you feel like you have done something, achieved something.”

“The best kind of recycling is when you take things and transform them into something special that looks like it is really expensive.”

While Kevin’s design challenge is adapting reclaimed and upcycled building materials to a new use – mine is to adapt, reuse and upcycle discarded clothing.

This skirt is for my friend Georgie Somerset. We cropped the old skirt to a length that suited her, then I cut up a silk top (forgot to photograph it) and used the frill as the new skirt hem and a brooch. Then to the skirt front, I sewed various strips gleaned from my silk off-cuts box and other oddments of tablecloth and ribbon.