Anyways, after chopping and hemming the skirt, I though that there was just enough fabric left over to make a top. I've never made one before, so I decided to follow a pattern.
I liked the top, but because I already had a skirt, I cut the pattern at the "lengthen here" line.
I lined up the pattern pieces on the bottom of the skirt with the hemmed part being the bottom of the shirt. It didn't quite fit the entire top on, but thats because the lengthen here line was at the hips and I only wanted it to go to my waist. I kept the hem in case I wanted to keep the dress as a top.
I cut out the pieces (I made them all the the same distance from the hem to the second lengthen here line, you can't really see that from the picture.)
I didn't take a picture of this step, but I just followed the directions that came with the pattern and sewed all the pieces together. I sewed on the facing and then turned it right side out and ironed it into place.
You can see I kinda made a mistake with the facing when I forgot to flip the piece when tracing. That's ok though, no-one will be looking at my facing... I hope.
I pinned it onto my skirt then, and tried it on, and made sure it was pinned at the right level, then basted it onto the skirt. And then tried it on again. Because ripping out a seam takes a lot longer than pulling out a basting string. As I've learned the hard way.
Rant time... I went all the way out to Fabricland last week to get zippers for this dress and for some other skirts that needed replacing. They did not have black zippers in any of the lengths that I wanted. You would think they would stock more black and white ones than coloured ones! And they even spaced out the remaining black ones so that it looked like they had all the lengths, but it just made it confusing. Also, they only had separable zippers with giant plastic or metal teeth. I really wanted to keep the original zipper in the skirt and just add a separable one at the top, but it would have looked hideous with giant teeth. Ok, I'm done now.
So I took out the original zipper on the skirt and pinned on the new one. And then I basted it, and tried on the dress.
I carefully studied how the original zipper was put in and tried to reconstruct that with the new zipper. I learned how to use the zipper foot on my sewing machine, thanks to youtube. I also learned the buttonhole foot and the button attaching foot.
As you can see in the above pic, the buttonhole was now on the wrong side. Because the tab would have had to have gone under the zipper to button. So I sewed up the old buttonhole and put in a new one on the tab. I resewed the button over the old buttonhole (when it's buttoned, you can't see it.) Lastly, I put a hook and loop at the top of the dress to keep it from sliding open/prevent zipper damage... well really it was because the zipper didn't quite get to the top....
The last thing to do was the straps. I measured from the highest point on the front to around the back, and added three inches to that. I cut 3.5 inch strips of the remaining fabric (they were half the length that I needed, so I sewed them together into a longer strap). I folded them in half wrong way out, and ironed them down. I sewed a hem about an inch from the fold, and then cut off the excess fabric. I turned it right side out and ironed it again to make flat straps.
Then I couldn't decide wether to do tank top straps, a cris-cross in the back, or keep it simple with straps that tied into a halter. Then I thought... por que no los tres? Then it could be either of the three depending on my mood.
I sewed the straps to the facing/top of the front. I then folded the other end over twice to hide the raw end and stitched it into place, twice. I then put in on and marked where I needed to put the buttonholes for straight straps and cross straps. I made buttonholes where the marks were.
And I put little buttons on the inside of the back of the dress.
And after trying it one more time and taking it in a bit from the sides (even after all the trying on, it still felt a bit big), I was finally done! My first ever dress!
Here are some pretty pictures of it:
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Love, A