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Refashioning a (Badly) Handmade Dress

One Dress, Three Ways: No-Sew One Sleeve Dress Refashion
Happy Holidays: A Muumuu Refashion

Hello friends! I’m sorry to have been gone for so long!

I don’t have any great excuses. I’ve been busy spending time with friends & my new(isn) fella and trying to keep warm in this cold snap that’s hit SC so very hard.  

It’s hard to refashion when you just want to hide under warm sweaters and fleece-lined leggings every day!  The time I usually spend sewing has been spent cooking tasty warm things for my favorite people.  ðŸ™‚

But when I flipped through my refashion rack the other day, I saw this sad frock and knew I had to do something with it!

Refashioning a badly handmade dress before
Hello again!

This dress was a challenge.  

It’s handmade, but not very well (sorry!).  :/  

The hem was uneven and a lot of it was hastily sewn together.  

It was also riddled with holes along the seams.

holes in seam of dress
Riddled, I say!
closeup of uneven frayed stitching
Herm. :/
more holes in seam of dress
This dress is definitely suffering from a bit of internal damage…

I can still work my refashion magic on this, though!  

To get started, I used my seam ripper to do a bit of de-doilying!

removing lace from front of dress with seam ripper
Enough is enough!

The lace bits were only loosely hand-sewn, so removing most of them wasn’t very hard or time-consuming.

more seam ripping
Moderation is key.

Now that those doily bits were gone, I was ready to do some altering!

I put my dress on my dress form inside-out and pinned the sides.

pinned sides of dress on dress form
Reshaping in progress!

Then, I sewed each side down.

This step fixed the split side seam issues I called out earlier. Whew!

First Whirrrrrrrrr of the new year! :)
First Whirrrrrrrrr of the new year! 🙂

My new frock was already looking much better, but I still needed to deal with that too-long/uneven hem.  

To do this, I measured from the waist of the dress, rather than the bottom.  

I marked along the edge, then snipped away!

cutting off bottom of dress
Better!

I then pinned a quick hem and stitched down that raw edge.

sewing new hem
New hem!

After a good press, I think my dress looks quite sweet now!

Refashioning a badly handmade dress after
It’s positively ModClothian! 🙂

It’s a bit more cutesy/girly than I usually go, so I spiced it up a little with my fave leopard print boots and minty green tights.

I wore my new dress to The Nickelodeon to check out one of my new favorite horror films, The Babadook!

babadook movie poster
One of the scariest movies I’ve ever seen!

Of course, it’s pretty chilly here, so most folks only got to see my new frock like this:

Refashioning a badly handmade dress after with cardigan
Gotta love a cozy sweater! 🙂

Now that that fearsome frock has been conquered, the only thing I have to fear is Mr. Babadook!

Jillian and friend acting scared
Eep!

Cheers!

Refashioning a badly handmade dress before and after
One Dress, Three Ways: No-Sew One Sleeve Dress Refashion
Happy Holidays: A Muumuu Refashion