Around the World in 80 Dresses: Colorblock Dress Tutorial

Our first installment in a series of projects and tutorials to kick off the week ... but Huli has already beaten me to the punch! I love her simple refashion and can't wait to see more pouring onto the site. In the meantime, here's a tutorial I put together to transform a long skirt into a colorblocked dress.

Before:


After:

The great thing abut this type of refashion is that you can use almost any oversized dress or skirt to make a colorblocked dress; just attach it at the waist and you're good to go! If you're extra clever, you can even make the top a refashion too (in my case, I was using up leftover scraps from a previous dress). I used a commercial Simplicity pattern with princess seams for the top. If you want to create coordinating embellishments, you'll need at least an ankle-length skirt (or an oversized dress).

Step 1 (not pictured): assemble dress "top." Be sure to note where zipper will be located (mine was in the back).

Step 2: Measure how long you would like your skirt to be, add 1/2" seam allowance, and chop off bottom of skirt (mine was 22" long). Check to see if there is an existing seam where the zipper will be inserted. If so, use seam ripper to remove 8" of stitching along that seam. If you are inserting a zipper where there is no seam (for example, in the back of a skirt with only 2 seams), you will need to cut the skirt straight up, zig zag the edges, and stitch the skirt back together, leaving an 8" gap at the top where the zipper will go in.

Step 3: pin skirt to top. Since my skirt was wider than my top, I decided to use pleats to take in the excess, and I decided to have the pleat align with the princess seam. First I marked the center front and center back.

Then I pinned the skirt and top, right sides together, so that the center fronts aligned, and then so that the side seams aligned. Then I pinned in a bit, before overlapping the fabric so that the pleat would "butt" up against the princess seam, as below:

Repeat for back. Stitch skirt to blouse (I added a row of staystitching to prevent the waist from stretching out too much). Press open.

Step 4: Insert zipper.

Step 5: Embellishments. If you've used an ankle-length skirt, you will have a length of fabric leftover with which to embellish. For my dress, I chose to make a series of fabric yo-yo's to attach to the front. I also cut bias strips and used them to bind the armholes, bias fabric facing out, to help tie the look together. To do this I cut a series of 1.25" wide bias strips, folded it in half wrong sides together, then stitched it to the armhole using a 3/16" seam allowance on the inside of the armholes, flipped the bias tape to the outside, and stitched in the ditch to secure.

There are a number of tutorials for yo-yo's, I tend to use this one.

As you can see, I used the entire front of the skirt to make the yo-yo's! I have 4 different sizes of yo-yo's here. Pin in place on your dress front, then try on your dress and adjust as needed. I adjusted 3-4 times before I found an arrangement that I was happy with. For reference, here's a closeup of the final configuration.

Step 7: Grab a pair of sandals and flaunt your new dress!

A bit involved, yes, but easily modified to suit your materials on hand! You don't have to use embellishments, or you could adapt this to stretchy knit materials, use fabrics with less contrast, use gathers instead of pleats, use more pleats, straight up attach an oversized skirt to a wide blouse and cinch it in with elastic, use contrasting embellishments ... the possibilities are endless!

Let me know if you have any questions or want clarifications, but otherwise - happy refashioning! I look forward to seeing more dresses pop up around here soon! And if you refashion a dress based on this tutorial, please leave a comment here or on my blog -- I'd love to see it!