Dress of Two Halves

July 31, 2013 by sewruth 37 Comments

Spurred on by my recent re-hash of the Vogue 1312 dress into a skirt, I went searching through the wardrobe for ‘others’.

I don’t know about you, but I have some sort of strange and possibly unhealthy, emotional attachment to things I’ve made – even those that aren’t perfect. When clearing out old clothes I find it much easier to give away RTW, even expensive ones, rather than part with a wadder. So my sewing room is fast becoming a graveyard of unworn dresses and shirts.

You may remember this.. Vintage Vogue 8851Made in Paul Smith cotton shirting. It was OK, nothing special and I’ve worn it once. Probably for the photo. The fabric is deliciously smooth and soft but the dress did nothing for me. So out came the scissors…….

As you can see there is a waist seam at the back but none at the front and the front band extends well below waist length. The back is fitted but the front is loose.

Cutting a dress into a skirt is not always as simple as hacking off the top and making a waistband.

Instead of just cutting into the dress, I unpicked most of the seams apart from the bodice/sleeve construction and the skirt. A nice job to do in the shade of our big tree in the garden. I ended up with a top half and a bottom.

The skirt fronted needed darts for fit and the dress length zip was cut in half and extra stitches added as a stopper at the top – saved me having to re-insert the zip, though the in-seam side pocket had to go. There were enough left-overs from the original make in the stash box to fashion a waistband. I re-used the front band and added this to the front of the skirt as a detail.

The back still has the pleat so ease of walking and sitting is not restricted. The fabric wrinkles like mad – gives the skirt a loved and lived look.

Then I was left with the bodice. So much work went into this that I couldn’t just discard it, so I took a closer inspection as to how I could utilise it. The original dress had a huge 3″ hem, which was cut off when hemming the ‘new’ skirt which meant I had a bit more fabric to play with.

In the end I re-fashioned a jacket.

Sleeves and neckline remained intact but the front seam was opened and finished; the extra hem fabric was added as a band around the bottom of the jacket; added two patch pockets and sewed on two decorative buttons left over from the original dress cuffs.

I won’t wear the two together – too matchy – but the jacket is a great little throw over especially to cover shoulders and arms in extreme sunshine.

From one dress – two new garments. And no fabric purchased!