DIY dress refashion: from the "Awkward Big Blue" to something cooler.

Heya,
It's been a while, but I've been busy doing absolutely nothing. Ha.

So, I got this blue skirt thingy from a friend:

As you can see, it was slightly big for me, but the fabric is pretty awesome. It's flowy and shiny and has these awesome sewn flowers on it:

The color is really weird (in a good way), because in certain light it looks electric blue, then in another light it's almost black or dark drey with blueish tint... That's why it seems to be different color in every damn picture I took :D

I decided it was going to be a dress.

So what I did was measure the length I wanted the skirt part to be from the hem up, and cut it:

I then pleated the skirt part to fit my waist:

I added a waistband of another fabric since I wasn't sure if there would be enough if I cut some fabric from the top part that was left.

...then I took the top part and removed the original zipper and sewed it into the pleated bottom part of my dress-to-be. I cut some armholes on the top part, below the original waistband; made the waistband into a v-shape neckline and then just wrapped the whole thing around me and folded and pinned and unpinned and refolded the excess fabric this way and that until I found something that looked pretty okay. This was a frustrating process so there are no pictures of it happening. :P

Once I'd found a way the fabric was folded that was good, I pinned it and sewed it in place. I also hemmed the armholes I'd made and top-stitched the neckline.

Then I decided that I wanted the dress to have a cutout in the back, and so I sewed the top onto the bottom part only at the front. Next I decided that I wanted the top part to have buttons instead of a zipper! Oh, okay, that's fine... But do you know what having buttons means? Buttonholes.

Have you ever sewn a buttonhole? And not with a sewing machine, but by hand? (My old sewing machine has a buttonhole function but I've tried and failed using it, so by hand it was! In case you are as crazy as I am and want to embark on a journey of buttonholes-by-hand, here's a tutorial for that and good luck to you.)

So, sewing buttonholes by hand takes a lot of time. And I mean a lot. And it's frustrating as hell. But well, eventually (after about four hours) I'd managed to sew five buttonholes and five buttons to the back of my new dress. And now I never want to see another buttonhole in my life.

Pictured: the bane of my existence.

And then on top of that, I had to wait for my husband to come home to actually try the dress on, because I couldn't button the dress up without help.

(Note to self: don't go anywhere wearing this dress if you're not a 100% certain there will be someone to help you out of it at the end of the night. :P)

But what do you know, it actually turned out pretty good.

(If you ignore my arm flab.)

Sure, it's not completely symmetrical or anything, and the armhole hemming is the most uneven and bulged thing I have ever seen in my life, but I think I did okay. :D

(And now I have to post this gif here :D)

Oh, Tony. :D

***

But yeah, from an oversized blue skirt to a pleated cutout dress. (With buttonholes. Those damn buttonholes.)

Ta-dah!

So, how do you like my newest refashion? :)

love,
scoundrel