Upcycled Dress / Skirt

                                                      (me without glasses)
I really don't like taking pictures of myself, but really wanted to share a recent thrift shop find that I up-cycled into a new skirt.  I've been following Marisa Lynch's "New Dress a Day" blog for a while now, and thought I'd try to do my own remake after spotting this sundress in a local thrift store.  It was only $3.  It was the fabric print that got me. Beautiful!

The dress itself wasn't that bad, but it was longer than I liked, and pretty shapeless.

So I decided to cut the dress in half to make a skirt out of it.  With this much fabric to work with (it wasn't a form fitting dress), I simple measured up 22 inches from the hem and cut straight across.

I then turned down an inch and a half of the new "waist, pinned and sewed up a new casing, turning under the edge a 1/4 inch as I went, and leaving an opening for the elastic.

Then it was only a matter of cutting a comfortable length of 1 inch elastic for my waist, threading it through the casing, stitching it together and sewing the casing closed. It seriously took me longer to write this blog post than it did to finish up a new skirt!  I'll probably add a small finishing hem to the top half to make a cute top.  Now we just need the weather to warm up so that I can wear it!