The other day, I asked the following question on the ReFashionista Facebook page:
Over 450 of you were kind enough to weigh in, and the 1970’s beige maternity dress on the left was the winner!
This is one I’ve had in my stash for a little while, and I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with it.
Lots of you chimed in with the suggestion of saving it to use it to dress as Eleven from Stranger Things for Halloween…
There were exactly two problems with this suggestion for me. First, I already know what my costume is this year (Come on…I plan this stuff months in advance), and second, Eleven’s dress is pink, not beige (which I think is a pretty important detail). Since the dress is polyester, dyeing it would be just about impossible. Even it it were possible, I’d have to remove and reattach the collar, and did I mention I don’t wanna dress as Eleven? 😉
So please, don’t be mad about what I’m about to do…
Sorry…
It’s important to note that while it’s technically fall, it’s still also technically 80-something degrees here in SC. Long sleeves still don’t make much sense, and I found these puffy ones stifling.
Another problem with this dress was that front pleating. Originally intended to swath its mom-to-be in folds of polyester comfort, they just made me look dumpy and weird. To get rid of them, I first cut off the side seams from the dress…
…then I cut off the pleated section right below that folded-over part on the front.
The front was much larger than the back (due to the pleating), so I folded it in half, and laid the back part over it, aligning the front fold with the back seam.
I snipped this off…
…and then re-pinned the newly non-pleated front.
I stitched this down…
…and when I was done, the front looked like this:
I re-pinned and stitched the sides as well.
Next came the arm holes:
I tossed my new dress on my dress form for a final fitting…
…and then gave it a new hem.
By this point, I had crossed the line from Fashionably Late to a friend’s brunch to Incredibly Rude. :/ I stitched the two sleeves together, but they were too short to make a proper sash. So, I just tied one of the scraps around my waist, and draped the sleeves over the knot.
I think it turned out quite nice!
Luckily, my friends were forgiving of my tardiness once they saw how much work went into this refashion. 🙂
Cheers!
