New trapeze dress

I made a summery dress a week or so ago, out of an Old Navy trapeze top. I couldn't figure out what to wear with it, as it made me look like a walking rectangle with no waist or hips. But it fit well otherwise.



It was cute, so I couldn't just not wear it. It was already pretty long, so I didn't have to add much to it to make a dress. I took the bottom off a gigantic muu muu I got at the Salvation Army and sewed it to the bottom. The rest of the muu muu will be in at least one more project. Since the bottom of the muu muu was hemmed nicely, I didn't have to do any hemming. I just sewed it to the dress and up the sides of the added pieces (muu muu was wider than the trapeze dress. I kept the flared shape for the addition, too.



It's a little wrinkled here, but it's very comfortable and casual. :-)

Future project: convertible dress

I was surfing through some craft sites on Friday that I recently discovered and I came across this post by Rostitchery about a one seam convertible dress. I've seen dresses like these before and I've even come thisclose to buying a convertible scarf/top/skirt by American Apparel, mentioned in the comments of the post, at Cactus Flower in B-town, but I've never had any idea how to make an actual dress. I really want to make it now. It's very cute! All I need is a lot of cotton jersey fabric in a great color and I think I could make it quickly. Only I hope my machine can handle the knit and stretch of the fabric....

When bad dresses become good

I first saw this dress while I was browsing the clearance section of Target's Web site, and I thought it was really cute. After putting it in my cart to think about it and be sure I didn't forget about it, I went back and read the description and comments about it.

The comments for it on the Web site claimed it was unflattering and awkward because of a low-cut neckline, too-long straps, and worst of all, a band of elastic around the waist area. It was supposed to create a blouson effect for a knee-length dress, like on the left. And if you pull it down to get rid of that ugly effect, you get the dress on the right, which is just odd-shaped.



Yucky. As K put it, "it looks like a mushroom." Yes, it's trendy. I have a similar cotton dress that has the elastic at the waist, but it doesn't have the blouson effect (a.k.a. too much fabric up top) -- it's just there for shape. The comments for the dress included several people that found ways to alter it, so my initial attraction to it wasn't bothered too much. Mainly, they took out the elastic and loved the results. So when I ordered it, I knew it was a gamble and that the elastic probably had to go, and I was right, but I looked forward to a project and the pretty pattern on it. When I tried it on, the straps were a little too long, so it had no shape in the bodice. There's a nice gathered elastic spot under the bust, but with the straps as they were, it served no purpose and is hard to see.

Anyway, so I first dealt with the straps.

>

The knotted feature was cute, but the Web site said you could adjust them and that was really impossible without looking weird. They didn't untie; they expected you to somehow knot up the knots. I'm not really sure how that would work. Anyway, I cut through them in a sort of central location.



I think I untied the closest knots and then re-tied them in a crossed fashion, so now the bodice fits much better and it's higher up, too.

Next, I turned the dress inside out and snipped at the inside elastic seam until I could pull the elastic out. I'll probably need to wash and dry the dress before the creases from the elastic go away, but I think it looks pretty cool:



It's a breezy sundress, all for $6.24, a pair of scissors, and absolutely no sewing. If I ever get tired of the length, or longer dresses go out of style again, I'll just cut it off. It's a cotton/modal so it won't fray easily and it doesn't have a hem to begin with anyway. The lining only goes down to mid-thigh anyway, because it was supposed to be knee-length. So there's less work there, too, if I choose to cut it shorter. Although I really like it this way, and I had a lot of fun altering it.