Midwinter Floral Dress

Time to Complete: 30 mins
Sewing Machine Required? Yes
Difficulty: Medium

Exciting news! Refashion Without Rules will be presenting at the Prince George Public library on March 6, so if you enjoy following my blog, be sure to come by and check out some live demonstrations! You can find more information here.

To celebrate (and prepare), I've been doing a lot of refashions. Today we'll go over a very simple dress refashion. I started with this piece I got from a coworker:

My face says it all...

Good: Pretty fabric, cute puffed shoulders

Bad: Length, waistline sits below my natural waist, slightly too large

Fix: New hem. Everything else can be fixed with a belt.

Snip! 

As I was shortening this dress, I noticed that the original hem was quite uneven. I usually measure from the bottom when I want to shorten something, but with this one I had to measure down from the waist (and hope that the waist was level!)

Fold, iron, and pin to get a nice, smooth hem

I folded the raw edge under, ironed it, and pinned the new hem in place, then I stitched it down. That was it! I accessorized with a belt, to hide the fact that the waistline was in a weird place, and threw on a cardigan because it was chilly out. 

Voila!

Criticisms:  You might notice that the hem is a bit uneven--turns out the waistline wasn't perfectly straight either, so I ended up with a bit of a weird fit. This is something I could go back and fix with my dress form, and I may make a follow-up post to do just that.

BEFORE

AFTER