I finished this project maybe a month or so ago and have been wanting to post it since i started this blog. I only just moved everything over to my new laptop so I finally have the pictures for it! yay! ok so here it is.
This dress was a long plain black linen dress, with a waist tie connected to the back. Sorry for the horrible mirror pics of this, but its all i have now hehe.
It wasnt much when i first bought it, but i liked the straps; very reminiscent of overall straps, and overalls are in now. I actually bought this dress about a year ago and just kept it in my clothing bins at home while i went abroad n stuff, never looking at it again till spring break, when I had the urge to do something with it. I decided to make it into a jumper.
I dont have any pictures of the process, so I'll just have to bore you with my prose.
My first step was trying it on and figuring out where to cut first. I needed to remove the tie in the back, which was connected to the side seams and housed inside a tube made out of the top and bottom of the dress.
My first cuts were one on each side of the top till the point where the tie tube was. I seam ripped (well, cut, since i only had scissors) the top from the bottom and put the top aside for now.
I cut one side of the long bottom part and folded it in half longways so i cud see how long i cud make the skirt. I had enough fabric for a pleated skirt to i cut the rectangle long ways, sewed the two pieces together, and hemmed the thing. Some of it was already hemmed from the existing hem of the dress.
Next, I planned out my pleats. I first started with 2 inch pleats, but it was too small to fit around my hips, so I pulled the pleats out a little to 1.5 inches. That worked, and I pinned my top to the skirt so i could make an elastic tube. I wanted to be able to put in over my hips and then sit above them.
That part took a while since I hand-sewed it all n stuff.
After that, I moved on to the top. Before I sewed it to the skirt, it was two separate pieces only connected by the straps n flimsy buttons. While sewing them to the skirt, I placed the two pieces where I wanted, the front part taking up slightly more space than the back piece.
When approaching the top, I realized that the top was not hemmed, it had bias tape on the edges. That was a little annoying because at the start I had cut through that bias tape without realizing it. The top pieces were also too wide, so I cut them the width I wanted and seam ripped the bias tape connected to that part up to the strap area.
I had to go back and sew the bias tape back down in the back and front and still had space. So i seam ripped the dress's previous tie open and used that for the remaining bias tape I needed. Once I did all that, I was almost done. I shorted the two straps and changed the buttons.
Then I was finally done! Happy day!
Here's the finished product:
Hope you enjoyed! Thanks for reading or just looking.
