Polka Dress Refashion

I've been told I have too much time on my hands. This is probably true. Between my online course, college prep, and Etsy Shop, I managed to go thrifting and do another dress refashion.





Look at this. Just look at this. This marvelous vintage shoulder-padded wonder. It's beautiful.







I love the white polka dots on navy, and the shape of the waist that the darts make.

The shoulder pads are a little ridiculous, and it has a tie for the waist, but only in the back.

What a lovely housewife I make.

Anyway, I wanted to take off the lace on the collar, the shoulder pads, and the buttons right away. The buttons are really gorgeous, so I'm saving those to use on another project. The collar was tricky because the lace was sewn in, so I had to deconstruct most of the top and sew it back together.

After I took off the buttons, I sewed the entire front of the dress shut, so the collar became more of a peter pan thing. At that point, it became impossible to fit it back on the mannequin (shoulder problems..) so I couldn't document everything I was doing with pictures because polka dots get really dizzying when they're just sitting in unformed fabric. Trust me on this. 

After closing up the front

Anyway, around that point I took off the sleeves. No real reason really, but I liked how it looked sleeveless, so it stayed that way. The vintage was hard to work with because it had so many stitched in layers of fabric and interfacing, so it took a lot of gumption to rip everything out. 

I cut open the back and put in a zipper.

New zipper and full belt

I hacked it off knee length and opened up the sides of the dress. I took out the old tie pieces and used extra fabric from the bottom to create a fuller skirt and a complete belt. 

Love the fuller skirt

I made little bows and sewed them on the front. It gives it a neat nautical vintage/modern look. Anyway. Voila!

Handmade little bows

In conclusion. I took off the sleeves, shoulder pads, buttons, and the bottom half of the dress. I sewed up the front, put a zipper in the back, made a fuller skirt with extra fabric, a complete belt to tie around the waist, and little bows for the front (if you want to know how to do that, here).

This was one of my more frustrating projects, but I love how it turned out.