Refashioning: Shortening a Dress

Okay, Kiddies, so here is another way to alter your garments. This post is a continuation of an on-going process to revise my wardrobe so that 100% of it will look good on me every day. To learn about my journey to find this process, go here.

If you would like to join "Dressing Your Truth" at a discounted rate of $99 (rather than the normal $297) click here.

So, recently, I have joined a group of older ladies who go yard saling on Saturday mornings. It's fun and educational. If you are worried about not being able to spend money on revamping your wardrobe, I highly suggest yard saling. It's even cheaper than the thrift store and you can find much cooler stuff, because people are trying to make a buck off their yard sales, whereas thrift stores carry the clothes people throw out. Anyways, I found this super cute bright red dress at a church yard sale for $2.00. It is lightweight polyester. Notice how the bright red clashes with the colors in the mess of clothes behind it. That stack was part of my purging process (most of them being sold on eBay or given away). . .This dress was cute, but way too long--like mid-calf. Therefore, I cut off about 7 inches.

I had a friend ask me one time what the "surger stitch" was on a regular sewing machine. I don't know if it's called a "surger stitch" or not, but when I use that term, I mean the stitch on the left of the red dot below.

I used that stitch to keep the cut edge of the dress from fraying. (This is a faster alternative to double folding a hem which takes forever because you have to fold, press...fold, press. No thanks.)

Then, I folded the dress up on the wrong side measuring with two fingers and pinned it.

Then I hand-stitched an invisible hemming stitch in red thread. I could have done this much faster on the machine, but. . .I didn't.

As the last step, I pressed the hem just to make I flat, but you don't have to if the fabric lies flat. This whole process took about 10 minutes.

The End!

Fendi Inspired: Color-Blocked Hi-Low Skirt and Shirt, Blue and Black

 I had not planned on sewing this morning, but last night, I kept playing with color-blocking ideas  like Fendi does. Also, this royal blue color from about two fall/winters ago seems to still be making appearances:

I would like you to know that the Fendi dress above is $1700. . .On sale!!!

Anyways, I have this royal blue maxi skirt that I bought on eBay last fall, but haven't really worn because it's kinda tight and I bought another one that fits better. 

Also, I watched the Fall/Winter 2013-14 New York Mercedes-Benz Fashion week video on YouTube and they had these hi-low skirts like this drawing I did (I can't remember which designer's show had them. Notice the shirt at the bottom. Look familiar?):

Anyways, before I went to sleep I did a couple of drawings because I've been trying to figure out what to do with the skirt--it's too pretty a blue to throw away. Yes, I wanted to cut it into a hi-low, but what would I do with the extra material? I wanted to incorporate it into a top.

I decided to do the shirt on the left. It took forever this morning to get the cutting done, because I just couldn't bring myself to cut anything. I'm almost completely out of brown packing paper with which I make my patterns, so I sort of tried to use patterns that I already had made, but cut around them differently. Once I cut the skirt, I really had to be mindful how to use the piece I cut away to piece into the shirt, because it was much smaller than I'd anticipated. Also, I was down to just a very small piece of black. The idea of cutting anything was scaring me. A process that should have taken two hours became like four or five!

Here's the finished product (The blue is like the skirt above. I don't know why it came out as teal in these photographs.): 

Here's what the skirt looks like on. My mirror is dusty, sorry:

You can barely tell, but there is a bit of hi-low to the bottom of the shirt too.

Below you can see the problem with how little blue I had to work with. It was supposed to go all the way down to the waistline like in the drawing, but this is all I had. Oh well. Next time!

The End!