When I was given this sweater by a friend, I was tempted to leave it as-is. I mean, it was so soft and comfy cozy!
But when I saw this dress by BCBGMAXAZRIA, my plans changed!
I can’t wait for spring refashions, but with temps still dipping into the 30s at night, I’m afraid they’re just not practical yet. :/
A sweater dress it shall be!
My biggest challenge with this sweater was that it wasn’t long enough to make into a dress without adding fabric to the bottom.
I decided to take a chance that after I took in the sides I’d have enough leftover fabric to repurpose for the bottom of the dress.
With my fingers crossed (which made the whole process much more difficult), I got to pinning!
I did this for each side, then I chopped off a bit of the sleeves to get the 3/4 look of my inspiration piece.
I ran each side through my machine.
The first time I used a straight stitch, then with a zigzag to try to prevent unraveling/fraying.
When I was done, I started the finicky business of trimming the leftover scraps.
I made sure to save as much of the fabric as possible while still having enough to make my dress a decent length.
You can see the original serged side seam in the above pic. My plan was to use that to sort of mimic the layered look of Max’s dress (It’s a reach…I know!).
I pinned the trimmed scraps to the bottom of my dress…stretching them slightly so they’d make it all the way across each side.
Next, I sewed them to the bottom of the original sweater using a zigzag stitch riiiiight on the very edge.
(once again…to keep it from unraveling)
After I stitched the panel to each side, I sewed the sides together.
But was about the raw edges on the sleeves?
All that was left to do was give the raw edges a little tug so they’d do this:
I have several sweaters with edges like this that somehow manage to not fray, so I’m not too worried about using the same look myself. 🙂
Well…what do you think of my new sweater dress?
I had a red sash that matched my dress already, so I didn’t end up having to harvest the material from the sleeves (which would have totally worked).
I’m really happy with this refashion because there’s so little waste involved!
I wore my sweet frock to The Kraken where I enjoyed sampling a bit of their enormous selection of tasty brews!
I spent my evening hanging out with these guys:
and this guy:
I really enjoy doing these wannabes! I hope you guys are getting inspired to make your own copycats too! 🙂
Original Cost: $378
Copycat Cost: Free!
Savings: $378!
Cheers!
