Summer Convertible Dress

Let me begin by saying - I have a lot of sundresses. I love my maxi sun dresses. In Texas summers, it is a necessity and I wear them on outings, dates, & work. So...While cleaning out my closet, I came across a Target sundress that I bought a couple summers ago, but never wear, and another Target sundress that I bought at a thrift store for a refashion.

Both dresses are made of Rayon, and both were approximately the same length & cut. I like full maxi dresses - my over 40 figure does not like a fitted look - so I never really wore my one dress. But I really liked the fabric on both. My initial idea was to do some rayon palazzo pants, but I opted for a drawstring dress instead.

I've been working on making convertible dress patterns for myself and experimenting with different suitable fabrics for the various convertible patterns. The drawstring dress is nice because it can be tied multiple ways, an works with a wide variety of fabrics (rayon, silk & knits are best). Since these dresses were both basically simple rectangles, a drawstring dress seemed most appropriate.

Here are my starter dresses:

2 Rayon Sun Dresses

• Use a seam ripper to remove the elastic around the waist (black dress). Cut the tops off the dresses so I have 2 rectangular tubes
• Turn the tubes inside out & cut off the sewn side seam ...so now I have 4 separate rectangles

elastic and tops removed... cut off side seams .. now laying stacked to be sewn together and truing up the seams for stitching.

• Sew the 4 rectangles together (long sides) to make a big tube - alternating the pieces: chevron, black floral, chevron, black floral. I sewed mine using the french seam technique.

Sewing wrong sides together first  - then pressing and flipping to sew right sides together to create a french seam on the interior

• I lined up my pieces so that I was using the hem that came with the dress. In other words, I sewed from the bottom up rather than the top down.
• True up the top of the dress. On the Center Back seam (in this case it is the original CB of the black floral dress), open the seam about 6" down and stitch across the seam line to create a "stop" - press the seam allowance of the opening to the inside of the dress & stitch it in place. This creates a 6" deep open "V" on the dress, and gives you a place to create the tube for your drawstring to come out of.
• Fold the top of the dress down 1 1/2" to the inside and press. Then tuck the raw edge up under about 1/4" and press again. this creates the tube for the drawstring. Stitch down your tube about 1/8" in from the inside bottom fold.

That's it. Now you can  grab a 1" wide ribbon, or strip and sew some extra fabric to create a drawstring. I had a wrap style dress already, so I just borrowed that drawstring. Depending on your body size, you will want a drawstring that is 2-3 yards long so you can twist & wrap it around your body to tie it off.

Sorry for the cheesy back yard pics - that was the best I could do at the time. I'll try to get some better pics to post, and I will also tie it up multiple ways and take some pictures for you. I styled the dress with a sweater, heels and jewelry and wore this into the office. I'm also wearing a cami-style sports bra underneath it.

From my Pinterest Board on Convertible Clothing... here's a schematic of a multi-style drawstring dress

Super easy beginner sewing. Very comfy & verstile. Always boho chic!

Stay crafty!

Country Dress (Anthropologie/Free People Hack)

I was touched by the Taylor Swift muse in that I decided I needed a pretty country girl dress to wear with my boots. Something vintage-y and cute like you find at Anthropologie and Free People (but without the $100+ price tag).

  

I wasn't really finding anything online & didn't want to go hunting store to store - plus I knew I wanted something with a vintage feel. So I went off to my favorite thrift store to go look around. On the first try I found this little 80's number. It was marked at $6.99, but because it was damaged, I asked for a discount - they sold it to me for $2!

This dress has a great vintage floral print and good structure. But it has a terrible fit and a hole in the back that looks like some kind of varmint had its way with the dress. Oh yeah... and a signature 80's bow on the back!

When I first put it on the arm holes were too high, and the bust was way too tight (hence the gap showing my white tank). But I knew I could work with that. My original plan was to split open the side seams and use a triangle scrap of fabric to add about an inch to each side. When I began to inspect the seams - I discovered that this dress has french seams (basically that's a seam encased within itself).  Nice that this dress is of a higher quality than I originally thought - not nice to try to do an alteration on. But I decided to persist.

Step 1: Get that gawd awful bow off the back. Once it was off, it's actually a nice rectangle of fabric - good for those side seam triangle inserts I'm thinking about.
Step 2: Work around that giant hole in the back. I realized that I could go about 18" up from the hem line & clear the fabric damage, so I made that my first cutting line.
Step 3: Cut off the bottom of the dress at my 18" marked line.
Step 4: Discover the bonus points that the previous owner had taken up the shoulder seams! So I let those out & behold - armholes that fit me now! Yay. So that meant I didn't have to open up those french seamed side seams to insert extra fabric.

Once I had the dress all trimmed out - it was time to add some embellishment. I bought 2 yards of 2" black lace - not a lacey lace - more of a cotton country style lace. It was $5.99 a yard at JoAnn's & I used my 40% off coupon - so it came out to about 9 bucks with tax. I also bought a roll of skinny black crochet lace from Hobby Lobby - again using my 40% off coupon - so that was $1.50 for a 3 yard roll.

The first thing I did was serge the bottom hem to keep the fabric from coming apart (if you don't have a serger, you could just zigzag stitch it). Then I sewed the 2" lace on to the bottom with about 3/8" overlap from the serged edge. I could have left the dress like that - as a mini dress. But I'm over 40 and mini dresses are just too young for me, and have never really worked on me anyways, so I needed to add some of the dress back on.

At first I cut a 10.5" wide piece from the original dress hem (the part that was cut off when we measured 18" up). At 10.5" up from the hem, I missed the varmint hole from the bottom side. I took that & pinned it onto my black lace and went to go take a look... mmm seemed a bit long to me. So I folded it up & repinned it to about knee length - I liked that much better. That ended up being about a 6" width.

Once I cut my 6" wide piece (leaving the original dress hem), I serged the raw edge and began pinning it around the lace - matching side seams, center front and center back - then finger gathered it to fit all the way around. Once everything was in place, I stitched it down (again with about a 3/8" overlap with the lace piece)

As a finishing touch, I decided that I needed a little lace at the top to balance it out. So I took my Hobby Lobby 3/8" black lace & stitched two rows of it down each side of the button placket, and around the neckline.

The dress is still a bit tight in the bust, but I decided that I like the look of wearing a cami underneath - so no alterations there.

I really like my country dress! All in all, it took about 3 hours of pressing, cutting & sewing time and a whoppin $12.50! What a bargin! Plus it brings new life into an old dress and maintains a better carbon footprint than buying a new dress.