One of my top three blog posts of all time is What to Wear to a Graduation. In that post I not only shed some light on what I consider to be appropriate attire for graduation ceremonies, I debuted the first maxi dress I bought.

People have said that short women can’t wear maxi dresses. I personally think that’s untrue. I have grown my maxi dress collection since then and have been happy to see these dresses hang around trend wise. Speaking of hanging around… that’s what my first maxi dress was doing. Just hanging it in the closet. I wore it a handful of times, but it seemed too busy or too formal for most of the time.

I finally got sick of seeing it go unused and with a company cookout looming, I decided to fix it.

Here’s what it looked like without the blazer

I’ve always had in my head that I could shorten this dress and wear it more, but I decided to do something else.

To counteract the busy pattern, I thought it’d make a great maxi skirt and pair well with a plain colored top.

Step 1 was to carefully remove the top of the dress.

Step 2 was to fix up the smocking to be the waistband.

Step 3 was to hem the skirt to a comfortable length.

Step 4 was to wear it!

We stopped by to check out progress on the house before heading to the cook out. My after picture of the skirt is a before picture of our kitchen!

I’m happy to share that my necklace in the picture is a handmade beauty passed down to my from Brad’s great grandmother.

Looking for another cookout refashion? Check out my purple patterns top.