Hoot Hoot - It's a Wrap!

I few weeks ago I bought this dress from Ebay. 

I wasn't exactly sure what I wanted to do with it considering it was a size 8 and I doubt I could get a size 8 over my head these days! 

So after days of thinking and nights of surfing Pinterest, I decided to try a wrap-around dress. I didn't use a pattern and kind of just winged it. I drew around a size 2 dress of Isabels, and modified it a little to have a wrap around shape. 

I cut the front 2 sides almost identical, except one side was longer than the other. 

I made the lining by cutting out a rectangle big enough to cover the whole dress, then I sewed right sides together, trimmed then zigzagged the rest.  Turned it the right way and did a top stitch along the bottom to look like a hem. 

This is the end result!

Pretty cute huh?!? 

Next time I will draw up a real pattern, so I can measure it all up correctly. One arm hole is smaller than the other, and it doesn't fit Isabel. At all. It is about a size 0-1 if I had to guess. But all you can do is try right? 

Refashion-ista!

A while ago I was feeling a bit glum about my sewing experiences, so I went searching for some inspiration. 
This is what I found - New Dress a Day!
Marisa takes old, worn out dresses and makes them wearable and fashionable again. So I took a leaf out of her book and had a go myself!


I was so excited to get started I forgot to get a 'before' picture. So this is how it went. I bought a womens size 10 'Miss Shop' dress from the Salvation army. Its only cost me $1! The dress is black and white checkered, spaghetti straps and it had an awful ruffle around the bottom. Also it buttons down the front. 


The first thing I did was seam rip the ruffles off, and man oh man did that take a long time! Then I hemmed the bottom (removing 2-3 buttons). I had to take the straps in at the back because it is for my 5 year old daughter, so it needed to be small. 


I put the dress on her inside-out, then I was able to pin the sides so I knew where to sew and cut. 
It was quite dull and boring for a 5 year old to wear, so I wanted to add colour. I added a blue flower with a button center, but it looked terrible. Kind of like those ribbons you win for coming first in something. So I took that off, and replaced it with a mixture of bright pink buttons. Now it's perfect!

Left is the bad, bad flower.. Right is with the pretty buttons. This is only a crappy iPhone shot. Will do a proper SLR shot when Miss Imogen gets home tomorrow.

Zoe
xx