A simple transformation: redesigning an old dress

Hi everyone. Hope you all are doing great. Last weekend was a bit rough. I was sick throughout but I'm glad I'm better now. Today I’d Love to show you a recent dress that I made from an old dress.

As humans, we all have things we have done in the past that we are not proud of. Sometimes it could be a mistake. Mine was a dress I made years ago. Even though I hated the dress, I still hoped to give it a new life, so I kept it. Since the beginning of this year, I have been sorting out my old fabrics and unfinished projects, so I could make them useful instead of leaving them and taking up storage space which I don't have.

The dress I’m redesigning is one of my practice dresses and I have decided to redesign it into something simple and wearable, nothing too serious. The first step was to undo all the stitches and take apart the old dress. Then I recut it to my preferred style. I made the back neckline of the dress very low and the front neckline high. The sleeves with a little dramatic flare.

Making this dress was quite easy aside from the fact that I had to lose the old dress first whilst trying not to rip the fabric. The material used is from the old dress and some scrap lining that doesn’t match the colour of the dress haha.

Process

I deconstructed the old dress and removed the parts that I needed. I took the bottom and the sleeves of the dress.

I cut the new front and back pieces from the sleeves of the old dress. I cut the lining as well and sewed the darts.

I joined the front and back pieces at the shoulders. Then I joined the lining and main fabric at the neckline. (pls ignore the off-colour lining)

For the bottom, I used the old dress bottom but I recut it into my precise measurement and I added 5 inches of the main fabric to the hem to make it longer.