I’ve been seeing a lot of tiered dresses lately online and have been wanting one of my own for a little while now.
That’s why I’m so excited to share my latest, a DIY Tiered Dress Refashion that I didn’t even need a pattern for!
I began with this dress I’d had in my stash for a while.
I originally thought I’d just end up turning it into a puffy sleeved top.
That is until I saw this inspiration piece from Zara.
That’s right! It’s copycat time!
Before we begin, let me set some reasonable expectations.
My starter dress doesn’t even come close to having enough fabric to get a dress quite as voluminous as my inspo piece. BUT, I think I can end up with something evocative of it.
First, I put my dress on my dress form and marked approximately where I’d want the top to end.
The top is going to end up being shorter than this, since I’ll be taking it in, AND I need to keep a seam allowance in mind.
That’s why I kept it a little longer than I thought it would need to be.
Then, I chopped off the top!
I put the top part of my dress back on my dress form and got to fitting.
I used my tape measure to make sure the sides were even.
I’m not making the top super-fitted for a couple of reasons.
One, the top of my inspiration piece isn’t super fitted.
Two, in order to get into this dress when I’m done, I’ll need a little room!
I tried to keep as much blousy-ness as I could in the sleeves.
I ran each side through my machine.
After I cut off the excess fabric, I tried it on and decided to cut a little more off the bottom.
Time to deal with that skirt! First off, I measured the usable part of the skirt.
According to my rough calculations, this meant I could make the first two tiers of my skirt 6.5″ and the bottom tier 7″.
So, I measured those measurements for the tiers out with some tailor’s chalk!
Then, I cut them out!
Time to graduate those tiers!
I left the bottom tier as-is, as I wanted my dress to have as much volume as possible.
I cut the top tier, leaving it a little larger than the bottom of my top.
Then, I cut the middle tier, leaving it somewhere in between the size of the top and bottom tiers.
I’m not a fan of math, so I didn’t measure this. I just eyeballed it.
I stitched the vertical open edges of the top two tiers together, and was then ready for my next step!
Gathering those tiers!
Creating gathers for tiers is super easy, friends!
I set my machine’s stitch length for a basting stitch (5), and ramped up the tension to 9. This makes the machine create gathers for you!
When creating gathers, make sure you don’t backstitch to close it off AND make sure to leave a lot of extra extra thread on each end so you can adjust the gathers when you’re done!
Adjust your gathers and pin it together!
I started pinning the top tier to the top of my dress, right sides facing each other.
Stitch it down!
I ran this under my machine with regular tension and stitch size.
Repeat for the bottom two tiers and you’re done!
That’s it! Now I have a cute tiered dress I DIYed all by myself!
This refashion is also super comfy and perfect for a day spent celebrating Mr. Refashionista’s birthday!
While my tiered dress isn’t exactly a clone of my inspiration dress, I think I might like my version even better!
Cheers!
