Tea Party Dress Refashion
I picked this dress up at Goodwill for $3 to wear to my friend’s bridal shower tea party that I’m hostessing with her other bridal attendants this summer.
I obviously knew I couldn’t wear wear it as is and not be shunned. I was wearing jeans under it when the picture was taken!
I never intended to wear it that way, I saw the great print and waist on it and decided to make it look something like these dresses from Kohls ($100 ), Macy’s ($59) and Forever 21 ($19).
- The first thing I did was remove the worn buttons. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to replace them with different buttons or turn the old ones into fabric-covered buttons, but when they didn’t leave behind any holes of weird fabric bunches, I decided I didn’t really need buttons.
- While I had the dress on, I pinned where the neckline needed to fall to put the beautiful waist in the right location, then I safety-pinned the dress to a party dress from my closet with a shallow sweetheart neckline. Measured, pinned and cut it.
Watson helped - I folded the top over and stitched it down. I measured the skirt length on my existing dress and discovered that I wanted to cut 7 inches off of the length so I chopped and hemmed the skirt.
- The dress has a zipper in the back that I had left intact when making the top, so I had 8 inches of extra zipper folded over and pinned inside the dress for the time being. Making sure the zipper was unzipped, I cut the extra zipper off and stitched a tiny bit of fabric from my dress scraps onto the top to keep the zipper from running off the teeth and I reinforces the stitching from dress to zipper (I should have taken pictures of this to explain). The dress will get a hook sewn in above the zipper.
- I tried the dress on at this point to see how much side seam needed to come in. I took each side in about 2 inches and sewed two darts into the smocking on the dresses back to tighten up the waist.
- Finally, using bottom scrap, I made inch-wide straps and attached them to my dress. I toyed with the idea of putting cross-straps on it, but decided not to.
Here’s what I ended up with:
I couldn’t wait to share this project! Next time I wear this it’ll be properly styled for a tea party with a vintage hat and probably some pearls.
Brad took all of the pictures of me in the dress, isn’t he a good photographer? I’m pretty sure he thought I was insane when I brought the dress home.
Look what I got! Linking up with Tara and Sharon.
Adorable! I love that print and what you did with it!!
Thanks! This is my biggest undertaking yet but thankfully there wasn’t much on the line ($3). I saw the waistline on the dress and just had to go for it.
Great dress. Love the floral pattern
Visiting from the link up. Don’t forget to link up today: show me your favorite spring trend. I’m also hosting a giveaways for a $300 gift card to Gap/Old Navy/Banana Republic. Stop by and enter.
Agi:)
vodkainfusedlemonade.com
Thank you!
Wow, that is very impressive!!!
Wow! I never would have guessed that you refashioned such a stylish dress from that frumpy thrift store find.
Thanks! My husband saw it when I brought it home and the first words out of his mouth were: “Why would you buy that?”
Wow! I am so impressed. I have zero sewing sills whatsoever.
This turned out really great. I wish some one had taught me how to sew… Great job. 🙂
Except for a very elementary class in Home Economics back in the dark ages, I’m self taught. This isn’t brain surgery, you can teach yourself enough to do things like this. I promise.
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I think this is one of the prettiest refashioned dresses I have seen on any refashion blog ever. I love the print and the style and I think you did an awesome job! I feel so inspired! Thank you so much!
Thank you! The way this dress turned out has encouraged me to do more refashioning.
Great Refashion! Congrats on stepping it up a notch with such success.
Thanks! After this turned out better than I had imagined, I took on a new project that i’ll post when I’ve finished.
Your dress turned out great!!
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Hi Rachel, I came here through Co-Op Rafashion! Ijust love what you did with this dress!!! Great Refashion! And the refashion of the sweater turn out real cool too!!!
Keep on going Rachel!
Kisses from Portugal!
Bravo pour cette transformation !!
bonne journée