Sleeveless Dress to Keyhole Back Top Refashion

I’ve had this black dress on my refashion rack for a couple of months.  I just couldn’t figure out what I wanted to do with it.

SPOILER ALERT:  My original plan doesn’t work out!

I finally decided to turn this dress into an entirely different dress!  I snipped off the seam to one of the shoulders.

Then, I grabbed a spool of grosgrain ribbon…

…and pinned it to both sides of the  recently cut shoulder.

I stitched each one down.

Do you see where I’m going with this?  My plan was to make the two shoulder pieces the new front of the dress, and use the other arm hole as a cool keyhole back!

I still had some fitting to do!  I took the whole thing in from the front (so as not to lose the back).

I trimmed off the extra fabric, threw my new dress on, and was immediately disappointed. :/

It just looked weird, folks.  First off, it wasn’t the casual dress I was going for.  It looked way too formal for anything I have coming up in the near future.  AND I didn’t take into account that the front and back of the dress weren’t identical.  This made the dress hang askew on me.

BLERG!

I thought all was lost, until I remembered this post by Sally over at Charity Shop Chic!

I NEVER think of going bare-midriffed.  I’m over 30. It just seems weird and inappropriate, right? But Sally looks so very cute in her top!  Surely I can look cute in what was about to be mine as well!

I made a big chop!

To play a bit more with the asymmetry of my new top, I decided to stitch down only one of the shoulders into a V, and left the other one as-is!

I think it’s quite fetching!

And just look at the back with its built-in air conditioning!

My new top was perfect for a birthday brunch with friends!

See?  Just because a refashion isn’t turning out quite how you wanted it to, that doesn’t mean you have to give up!  Just keep playing and see what happens!

Cheers!