Dress to skirt refashion

Starting items:

Dress, too small and too short, fabric a very lightweight polyester, viscose 3% elastane mix with some texture, made in Morocco.  There’s some difficult to see olive green in there as well as black and white.

Skirt, also too small and definitely too short, fabric 100% canvas weight cotton, broken zip.

Both items were originally from Primark, the epitome of fast fashion, and were given to me by daughter.

The plan was to combine them to make a skirt.

I was unsure at first if the two fabrics would work well together, because of the different weight and composition as well as the colours.

I decided to go for it, the heavier green cotton would be used to lengthen and add weight to the dress fabric.

First step, chop the dress

I know the cut is very high up the dress but I was unsure how much of the length could be used.  I tried this bottom section on, and although it was still small, the stretch in the fabric provided quite a lot of give, it didn’t look ridiculous, (but maybe not suitable for a blog photo)

The green skirt had quite a deep hem, so this was to ripped open, then cut two as wide as possible strips to sew onto the bottom of the dress.

In the lengthening process it would be necessary to follow the flared shape of the dress, and as the skirt does not really flare I decided to make some pleats to make sure the shape looked right.  The skirt was constructed of panels so there was a natural place for each pleat to go.

I sewed the 2 skirt strips together to make one long one, and hemmed it.  Before turning the hem over, cutting into the serged seams to reduce bulk.

Finished hemline with pleats.

This adds a nice amount of length and weight.

The waistband:

The fabric is so lightweight and stretchy and does not fray.  I am going to leave it as it is for now,  just turning over the right amount for a supremely comfortable yoga type waistband. I’ll try it for a few wears and review the situation. Because the cut was made so high in the dress and above the natural waist, it seems to work without slipping down.