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Overdyed Floral Halter Dress DIY Refashion

How to Make a No-Sew Face Mask
Thrift Store Style: It's All About Unique Pieces!

Yep. That title has a lot going on, doesn’t it? Don’t worry! It’ll all make sense very soon!

When I scored this dress for $1 at the thrift store, I originally thought I’d probably leave it as-is.

That was, until I tried it on.

refashionista before image
Just busy stress eating a block of cheese like it’s an apple. How have you been lately?

I’m actually fairly narrow-shouldered, but somehow this dress was uncomfortably snug in the sleeves (Must be all the glasses of wine I’ve been lifting as of late).

Also, upon closer investigation, I saw it was really faded as well.

faded floral fabric from dress
It has seen better days

However, the fabric was really comfy, and I had an idea of how to fix those sleeves!

But first, a dye bath!

I checked the label of my new dress, and saw it was a cotton/poly blend.

fabric content label
I love looking at old label designs, btw

The cotton will dye nicely. The polyester will not. This is totally fine by me, as all I’m trying to do is give it enough of a color refresh to hide that fading.

I chose some fuchsia dye. My thought process was, Yellow + Fuchsia = Some kind of Orange.

rit fuchsia dye
I choose you!

I prepped my dye bath.

fuchsia dye bath
Not too much!

Once again, I’m not going for a suuuuper saturated color here, so I only used about half the bottle (Dye is kind of pricey, so I like to stretch it out!).

I added my dress to its warm bath.

adding dress to dye bath for floral overdue
In you go!

I let it sit in its bath, stirring it periodically for thirty minutes.

dress in dye bath
Looking good already!

Then I tossed it in my washing machine to rinse and dried it.

Time to refashion this dress into a halter dress!

I put my dress on and pinned it at my armpit where I wanted my halter dress arm hole to be (allowing for a small seam allowance).

Marking new arm hole for refashion
Gaze into my armpit!

Then, I chopped off a sleeve!

chopping of sleeve for refashion
You are no longer needed!

Then, I layered the cut-off sleeve on the other side for a template and cut it off as well! this ensures both sides will be even Steven.

cutting off sleeve using other sleeve as a template
See?

I folded the arm holes under once and pinned them down.

pinning armhole for sleeveless dress
This fabric doesn’t fray, so just once is enough.

And under the needle they went!

sewing sleeveless dress arm hole
This didn’t take long at all!

You can see I kept the same green thread in my machine from my last refashion because I was feeling lazy thought it complemented the green in the flowers nicely.

After a quick press, I was all done!

An Overdyed Floral Halter Dress DIY Refashion After
Staying at home with my gnome!

Can we talk about how fantastic that color turned out for a second? I absolutely love dyeing over floral fabrics as they always look so much more interesting afterwards.

An Overdyed Floral Halter Dress DIY Refashion After Close Up
Seriously. So cute.

My arms and I love the new halter top too!

halter dress refashion close up
Halt(er) who goes there?
overdye dress refashion close up
It even matches the flowers!

Do you have any dresses in your closet you think might enjoy a similar refashion? Why not give it a try?

Cheers!

floral halter dress refashion before and after
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Thrift Store Style: It's All About Unique Pieces!