Really Red Refashion

This one is going to be a "quick and dirty" refashion. I've been a busy busy lady this week, and found myself this morning without a project in mind and definitely not one started. I found myself coming home at 6:00 this afternoon, getting dinner on the table at 7, and finally able to get to sewing around 8:30. With my hopes of getting to bed by 9:30... I needed something quick. (The dirty part is because I grabbed it from a Salvation Army bag that I have yet to throw in the washer... whoops.) Why is my bedtime earlier than most middle schoolers, you may ask? Well, as you may remember I signed myself up for a 3.5 mile run in June, so I've been attempting (yeah, sometimes I fail at it) to get up at 5:30am and go running. So far, I'm up to walk/running 1.5 miles which... is no where near 3.5. Hopefully by mid-June I'll be somewhere around the vicinity of 3.5. We will see.

Onto the project. Here is my Salvation Army smelling project:

Don't mind the pants underneath - as mentioned, this hadn't been washed.

 

This dress was priced at $2.99 and was half off. Plus, it reminded me of a dress that I currently owned and am in love with (that I did not buy for anywhere near $1.50.) Why not have two of them? So, I grabbed my dress that I really liked and made it into my "pattern".

As you can see, the red dress is quite a bit larger than my dress that I already owned. I actually did not mind the few inches of room that I had in the dress - it made it a bit more comfortable for errands and general around-town roaming. The arms were not ideal, and as much as I love the dress I owned, I've never been a huge fan of turtlenecks, so I wanted to nix the turtleneck on the new dress. First thing I did was chopped up the red dress:

Chop chop!

 

As you can see, I shortened the red dress, made the sleeves into short sleeves, and took off the turtle neck. I then pinned everything up and sewed it on up. I went around each seam twice because it was a really stretchy fabric. I also didn't end up with what one would call "straight" lines, but I made myself feel better because I had thread that matched the fabric exactly so... no one would notice, right?

 

All in all, it didn't turn out so bad. In hindsight, I may go back and make the dress smaller. The extra few inches of fabric in the dress isn't the most flattering thing on earth - BUT - it is really comfortable. It also goes really well with my new thrifted belt ($3!!), a style that I'm increasingly in love with. I think my bridal gown started the belt trend and I couldn't help but continue it from there.

 

Here she is:

 

See you all next Thursday! With any luck I'll be a running fool by then!