From dated elegance to modern elegance!

Hello my friends! I've been such a slacker lately, my last refashion was almost a month ago.. yikes! I've been very busy lately, in a very good way! More on that later though, let's get to the refashion!

I found this pretty little thing at a thrift store for $5.

I think it's rather elegant as is, but as I am about 15 years too young for this particular look, a little altering was required. The shoulder pads were the first to go, of course. Simple enough, now for the length. My original thought was to cut it off just under the sleeves, and turn the skirt into a maxi dress/skirt. I thought it would make an elegant skirt, but was uneasy about it so I asked a couple of my girls what they thought, and none of them thought it was a good idea to do something that drastic for this piece. (It's a Jessica Howard, probably between $70-$100 originally.) So I chopped to make it above the knee instead.

I thought it was quite convenient that the design of the dress was pretty much right where I needed it for choppage, and choppage commenced. Only for me to discover that I had committed my customary mistake of cutting too short. I suppose I'll learn one of these days. But then, you learn cool things from your mistakes eh? Looking for a silver lining here. I went on to the sleeves and decided to worry about the length later. Those were pretty easy, remove and hem. (I should have given myself a leetle extra room on the outside layer of fabric for hemming the sleeves, but no harm was done, I managed fine.) Now about that length.

I looked at my remaining scrap, which I had thought about possibly turning into a lovely pencil skirt (there was actually enough fabric for that), but then realized I'd need part of it to lengthen my dress. I thought about using the natural hem, and spare myself some stitching, but upon further inspection, found out why the previous owner had disposed of the dress in the first place. Some yukky looking stains.

 I don't know if it's very clear from this pic, but those are definitely some kind of yellowish stains, I dare not try to find out what. Well never mind then! I went to the top of the scrap piece and realized I could chop down to the next straight bar of the design, and attach that to the bottom of the skirt. You can see from the design that I couldn't just use any part of the skirt, it had to flow and match somehow. Chop again, very very carefully. I pinned my 3 inch section of newly chopped fabric to the bottom of my dress, and discovered it would be perfect! Sewing commenced! Stitch stitch whiiirrrrr... Happily I go til the last six inches, whereupon I realized I would be just over half an inch short. I really don't know how that happened. Groan!!!! After having a teensy tiny little meltdown, I decided to see if this particular knit/metallic/something else fabric had any reasonable stretch to it, and thanks be, it did! I stretched the fabric to make it fit, which it just barely did (and btw, that is totally cheating, but who cares?) And the dress was finished! I took a good look at it and realized I would not have to hem it at all, so that worry was removed. Now I just had to match jewelry and I'd be good to go! I have to add here that I considered dying it originally, maybe a lovely light blue? But took a look at the different fabric combo and looked up everything I could about dye, and decided it wasn't worth the risk on something this pretty.

I discovered that much to my dismay, gold was really the only thing that would go with it, and I am NOT a gold fan. I have exactly two pieces of gold jewelry, and both pieces are more costume jewelry than fine, but that actually ended up working just fine.

So, on with the gold jewelry and pink shoes! (That combo actually did go together quite well, but I forgot about those shoes for the pic.. oops!)

Voila!

You see? Not so bad after all I think! It's virgin outing was to a wedding. A wedding to which I was greatly overdressed, but I styled and profiled anyway! I love the way the bottom strip looks like it ruffles in the breeze. (It totally does), and I think it looks like it was made that way. :)

Before and After

 

I think this one is my favorite refashion yet! Much love! I've purchased about four other new refash's, hopefully it won't take me a month to complete and post this time, but it's holiday season, I've got a Christmas play and alot of other things, so promise you won't be too disappointed if I don't get to it!! Much love!