Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Hawaii: Part V

This piece certainly had the most dramatic change of my Hawaii wardrobe. It began its life as a men's button-down shirt with cute little flamingos all over it.

Flamingo Shirt-to-Dress Refashion - Before

In theory, this dress is constructed similarly to my t-shirt dress tutorial (found here). However, in practice, it was a little more complicated than that. The original shirt was only a men's medium, so an A-line shape cut out of the shirt body was juuuust big enough to form the bottom portion of the dress. And the sleeves were clearly not going to be sufficient fabric to create the bust portion. In fact, you can see from the photo of the back that I had to do some creative piecing to make it work. I used scraps of fabric from around the collar and upper back of the shirt to fill in the gaps. I was also able to reuse the top button from the collar and the back-up button the manufacturer sewed into the inside seam. I even sewed two new button-holes (the top two) all by myself! Well, with the help of my sewing machine, which is not state-of-the-art and does not possess fully-automated button-hole-making capabilities, but it's also not vintage, so it has some basic button-hole settings. Anywho, I'm very proud. Finally, I disassembled the collar (must use every part of the buffalo) to sew a couple long strips of fabric for the straps.

Flamingo Shirt-to-Dress Refashion - AfterFlamingo Shirt-to-Dress Refashion - After, Back

I feel sorry for the upside-down flamingo on the back though. Poor guy will never stand upright. Sad flamingo.

Flaminog Dress Before & After


1 comment: