June 18, 2009

summer dress sewing

Yeah so I should probably write up some notes on my last stuff-making endeavor before I totally forget all about it. I’d had this tutorial on how to convert a men’s buttondown shirt into a dress bookmarked on delicious for ages, like from before I learned how not to break the sewing machine and make it make a burning smell every time I used it. Now that I do know how not to break the sewing machine, I started looking for enormous men’s dress shirts with appealing patterns every time I visit the thrift store, which is pretty often because Village Discount Outlet is super excellent. I was quite pleased with this one:

It is for a “2XLT TALL MAN” so it was already almost down to my knees, and wide enough for at least two of me to fit inside. An auspicious start!

So luckily I have some friends who own a dress form, and I went to their house to stick a crapload of pins in my shirt after cutting off the sleeves and slicing up the side seams per the tutorial’s instructions. Side note: if you ever find a dress form in the trash or something, I am the person who will take it off your hands. That thing was useful, and new ones are way too expensive. Anyway, onward! I wound up taking off about 5” of material on each side of the shirt so that it would fit to my torso, with enough left for seam allowances. This line extended down to just below the pockets, then I cut on a diagonal to the original seam at the bottom of the shirt so it would make a nice loose skirt. I ended up with this!

Because it was so wide to begin with I just sewed the raw edges shut on the arm holes to make cap sleeves, rather than bothering with cutting another piece for an actual sleeve. I saved the scraps that were the sleeves, and they came in handy to make this bit:

The shirt sleeve sash has the added advantage of compensating for my still-kinda-craptacular sewing skills by defining the waist a little more. I am pretty proud of this thing and I intend on wearing the hell out of it all summer. It has even survived a trip through the washing machine, which is more than I can say for some things I’ve made.

And since I very much have a use-all-parts-of-the-buffalo mentality when I make things, any suggestions for what I should do with the remaining scraps of this shirt?

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