Upcycled Old Navy Dresses

I recently got some dresses from Old Navy, one was a small ladies strapless dress for $2.00. The other was a women's dress that was $1.47

I didn't like the way the small looked on me. It was too.. ruffly. So I cut off the top. Added some elastic and made a skirt for Diva. She LOVES it. Its just her style. I didn't do much to it at all. But the little I did made it perfect for us.

The dress before.

 Added elastic.

Finished waist. 

Next dress-

For this dress I found. It was an XXL. I looved this material and color. I'm not a great seamstress. At all.  So for me to even attempt to sew material this slippery and stretchy into something isn't worth the cost of material that would end up in the scrap bin :). Since this was already a tube dress I was more than half way there. I wanted a long bustled skirt. Easy peasy. Just cut off the top and and add a waist right? Not so much. I've had a hard time finding a skirt that was long enough to do this with. By the time you fold up the waist band the skirt is too short.

Here's what I did-

1. Cut off most of the top of the dress. 

2. I wanted the front to be a nice flat panel instead of just bunched up, I didn't need or want extra bulk, or bunching there. So I took some stabilizer to make a panel for the front band. 

3. Sew some ribbon to the ends of the pannel

4. On what will be the back of the skirt, put two button holes the height of the ribbon. About  1 inch apart. Use a stabilizer where the holes are. (I took a picture of the stabilizer, not the holes. Ugh.)

For the front- To keep the ribbon out of the way, I pinned it up. Then I realized that wasn't going to help me at all. Because I needed to sew the waist band over the panel, and I couldn't get the ribbon unpinned. I have so many ideas, execution of them... not so much.

5. Sew one straight stitch of the panel to secure it to the front of the waist band. So it doesn't slide around. I did this before I folded the panel down so you can't see it from the outside. Sew the top of the dress down over the panel.  Keep an eye on the ribbon so you don't sew it into the dress. (I used a post it to help me sew straight.)

Once the panel is sewn into the waist band, put the ribbon through the holes in the back. The skirt will be big around, but will bustle beautifully when gathered.

I had the genius idea to top stich the top of my waist band. I'm not sure I like that as much.

Here's what the finished skirt looks like from the back. Not perfect, but I like it. AND mental note, match your threads very carefully. I'm sure they covered that in sewing 101, but I wasn't in that class.