Dress to Skirt

Its happened to all of us. In my case it involved a dress I ordered off of eBay. It came in and I loved the fabric but hated the way it looked on me. Since there was no returning the item there it sat in my closet. I couldn't bear to give it away because every time I looked at it I fell in love with the fabric again, but there was no way I was going to wear it as it was.

I pulled it out again this year and because the fabric is so summery I toyed with the idea of turning it into a skirt. I had thought of this before but with buttons running down the front I couldn't think how to get around having a center front seam. And.... was it wide enough, or too wide, would it be too short? So I went back to my closet and pulled out other skirts that fit and compared them to the cut of the skirt of the dress. Yes- it would be long enough, it wouldn't be too full, but it would be full enough to put an elastic casing for the waistband. I still had the pesky problem of the center front seam- wait a minute one of my skirts has a center front seam and its never bothered me. I had never really realized it before. So...off came the buttons, I measured and cut off the top of the dress allowing enough for the length of the "new skirt" plus the casing for the elastic, but not so much that I'd have to re-hem it. One center seam (to make it a little less obvious I sewed a french seam) and casing later I had a new to me creation. I'm so glad I didn't give the dress away and the best part..... I didn't spend a dime on gas:).