I found this dress at the Salvation Army. The top part of the dress left much to be desired. The designer obviously thought it was fashionable, but the fit was not right. But the bottom … what a great material! Reminded me of handkerchiefs. Upcycling this into something better should be easy.
Upcycling an Ugly Dress into a Smashing Shirt
Don’t you think that material is great?
I machine-basted the bottom together, so it wouldn’t wiggle around on me while I worked.
Separate the top from the bottom.
The actual construction of the shirt was fairly simple using satin quilt binding. The only problem that I had was ironing out the binding itself. For this, I used a metal ruler (it was really hot, so be careful when touching the metal after ironing it!!), sliding the ruler out and ironing some more.
Pin it together.
This created the hem on the outside of the shirt. Putting the right sides together, I hand-basted the collar to the shirt.
And I got this. Now it’s folded over.
So I can machine sew it into place. This gives me a single blind stitch.
I started on the “V” part of the shirt. There isn’t one, so attaching the binding created one.
I’m going to have to hand-stitch this into place, and then machine-stitch on top of it.
Next time, I want to think about turning the collar at the shoulders, so it doesn’t seem like I have a bulky collar in the back. Maybe two more “V”s at the shoulders. But I’m decidedly very happy with my refashion!
