Refashion Without Rules: September 2017

Hello again! I won't bore you with the details of my long absence - suffice to say that we moved out of our apartment into a house, and it was a lot of work but well worth it! If you keep a close eye on the backgrounds in the pictures, you'll be able to see my new floors.

Anyhow, I have an exciting and much belated announcement! Refashion Without Rules will be making its first public appearance at the Prince George Mini Maker Faire on Saturday, September 30th! I am both excited and nervous to showcase my projects in person, and I hope to see you there!

My mom has agreed to help me person my booth, so the least I could do was manage a refashion for her! Obviously, I only want to give my mom the best, so I gave her this lovely kaftan.

She looks awfully happy to be wearing that...

This photo was taken at a family dinner at my grandparents', and the family were justifiably dubious when they first saw this frock. There is a lot of dress there, and it is very very bright--the picture doesn't do justice to just how tomato-y the red of this dress is. But the bottom border is gorgeous and the fabric is comfortable. This dress just needs to be a lot less, so that is what I planned to do.

The first thing I did was cut out the middle section, because I wanted to keep that lovely border and lose some of the red. There was a zipper down the back, but I cut right through it (making sure it was done up, of course).

Losing over a foot of length and a lot of red!

Then I also trimmed the sleeves to lose some more of the redness, at my mom's request.

Trim one sleeve...

...and use the cut section to measure the other sleeve.

Then I had to put this dress back together, sans center. The rule of thumb whenever joining two pieces of a garment is to make sure the right sides (the patterned or finished sides) are together--but simple as that sounds it always takes me a few pinning attempts to make sure I don't put something together half backwards.

Right sides together? Check.

I matched up the side and back seams and pinned them.

Seams properly pinned.

I pinned around the rest of the edge. Since the bottom piece from the skirt was wider than the top, I added two pleats in both the front and back to collect the excess fabric.

A pinned pleat.

Then I sewed them together! I went right over the zipper. Most sewing machines won't have a problem with a small zipper like this one.

It did make a cha-chunk sound, though...

With the top and bottom of the dress reunited, I noticed a slight problem. The original dress had a slit up the side, but with the shortened torso, that slit had migrated to an uncomfortable height. I unpicked the hem around the slit.

Picky pick...

Then I sewed the two sides of the slit together to match up with the existing seam.

Just follow the line...

Lastly, I dealt with the sleeves, and I apologize because I didn't take any pictures of that step! I did end up trimming a bit more off the sleeves to round them off, and then I simply hemmed the raw edge.

Here's the finished product!