Dress to Skirt

I recently went through the girls' dressers and closet, removing outgrown and weather-inappropriate clothing and things that required mending or a good stain soak.

And I came across this dress.



This is Dana's all-time favorite dress. She wore it for two summers, as often as possible, sometimes several times a week. It has been laundered about 10,000 times. The length is still OK, despite it being a 4T and her being in a 5 or 6 in everything else, so I was going to throw it in the summer bin in case it still fits her in June. And then I noticed that the stitching was coming out on the straps. So I brought it downstairs to stitch them back together, but it didn't work because the fabric on the straps was kind of rotten. There were so many tiny holes that there wasn't anything to sew together. I was trying to think of how to make new straps when it occurred to me that it's a 4T and the chances that it will be long enough next summer are slim to none. And if the straps are rotten, the rest of it can't be that far behind.

And so I converted it to a skirt.

I had Dana put it on so I could figure out how long to make it, and then, after she took it off, I carefully cut the bodice off and threw it away. I folded about an inch down along the waist to form a casing, and I stitched it down, leaving an opening for elastic. I had some 1" elastic in my stash, so I measured it around Dana's waist, cutting it 1" shorter than her waist is around. I fed it through the casing, stitched the ends together, stitched the casing closed and voila! A skirt!

I thought it needed something to spice it up a bit, but I didn't have any appropriate ribbon in my stash. I DID come across some ivory seam binding tape, so I fed it through my machine with the stitch length at 5, and then I pulled the bottom thread to gather it. I adjusted it so it would fit around the hem, and then I just sewed it along the hemline.

Dana thinks it's great! And the whole thing took less than an hour. I didn't even use pins!