Refashion Workshop: How to Make a Dress into a Skirt

I found this dress at the Salvation Army the other day. There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with it, but it was a badly designed dress. Time to upcycle it into something I can wear: a skirt! Don’t you love it when you can take something that someone else couldn’t do anything with, and repurpose it?

Remaking a Dress into a Skirt

I loved it on the rack, but when I got it home, it left much to be desired. Probably because the cut on the top part of the dress was all wrong, and I couldn’t actually get into it because there was no zipper or ties. (Have you ever fit something over your hips the size of your waist? With no give at all? That’s what this dress was like.)

Look at all that girly silky wonderfulness.

Chop off the top, so pin up the skirt part so the sheerness of the fabric won’t be my undoing.

I have this other black skirt, kind of like a satin-type of material, which has no shape. But it would be perfect for all the findings. I am going to steal all of it for my new skirt. I decided to use the waistband, too.

But first, I have to measure out the length. Fortunately, the black skirt is a good length.

Here’s the top portion. I’ll try to figure out someway to salvage this material, too.

Pin up the waistband to the top.

I’m going to need the zipper, so that’s the next to be salvaged. Make sure to take all the extra bits, because zippers have ends and whatnot.

The now-skirt has a back seam, so I carefully picked it out to insert the zipper.

And hand-basted the zipper in.

I can put the waistband on now. First, I stitched on the inside, and then, I stitched a zipper-like stitch on the front, directly underneath the waistband and including the waistband. You can’t see it too well in this picture, but you can see it when I put the snap on.

And machine-stitch, back-stitch the zipper into place.

I have this thing about zippers, that they need hooks and snaps because I’m afraid my skirt will accidentally come off while I’m in the middle of a presentation … yeah. Like a Seinfeld moment.

Notice the zipper-stitch on the waistband?

Okay, the skirt is awesome. Except it just isn’t total awesomeness. It needs something ….

I got it, a bow! I used those ties (from the top portion, which you can’t really see) to make a nice silky bow.

Attached it right above the zipper to hide the snap and the zipper.

Voila! Here is Lex modeling it for me.