A Refashioned Dress: Moving Out to the Suburbs of Dorkville

So, in the time honored blogger tradition of taking a frumpy thrift store find and upcycling it into a cute little Mod-cloth-esque dress, I present:

MOVING FROM THE HEART OF DORKVILLE TO THE 'BURBS

I took this

And turned it into this

So basically I took it from the heart of Dorkville to the 'burbs of Dorkville. Or in other words in went from homeschooling mom to homeschooling mom. But I think its dorky with class in its reincarnation. There is an art to being a dork, after all.

It was a straight shirtwaist dress, floral print, with a collar. It took a little over an hour to

1.  Remove the collar (with a stitch ripper) and simply iron and fold the edges of the neckline and sew them back together sans collar.
2. cut the T-shirt sleeves to cap sleeves (I just chopped some off, and bound the edges with a long thin strip from the collar.)
3. Sew a strip of fabric to the inside back as a casing for elastic to gather it there and to give the bodice a tiny bit more shape
4. Hack off the dress a couple inches above the natural waist, and sew on a half-circle skirt from a thrifted sheet. Thankfully, the dress was loose enough that she can pull it on over her head, since the bodice extends a little past her waist, and its actually quite loose, the hint of fittedness actually comes from that bit of elastic at waist level in back. So I didn't have to extend the opening/closure into the skirt. Which was nice.

It's still definitely in the homeschooling mom camp, but I think its cute in its own dorky way.

A few more shots of the dress in action. And in case you are wondering, I didn't suddenly become photogenic, that's my twin, who is photogenic.