Someone else may have a better idea, but what I'd suggest is turn inside out and make a kind of pleat near the bottom (or about knee height) and hand stitch around. If you wanted to shorten by 2 inches, pleat would be 1 inch. You could pin first to check length.
That way you wouldn't have to cut the nice fabric and there would be fairly minimal sewing. Depending on how much shortening was needed, the pleat might affect how they hang, but by pinning first, you could see how it worked.