Young at Art Skirt Disaster turned Successful Skirt to Dress Refashion

Every year I volunteer my time in some way in both kids classes at school.  This year I signed up for all of my daughters science labs and all of my sons Young at Art classes.  

I know better than to wear anything nice when I go, but for some dumb reason I wore this skirt when I went to help out with Young at Art.  It isn't my favorite, favorite …. but I still love it and didn't want it to get ruined.  Why oh why did I wear it?

Yep, you guessed it.  

It got painted.

In fact an entire bottle of black acrylic paint exploded in my hands when I was trying to squeeze a little out.  Fortunately, most of the paint landed on my shins, but my skirt got hit, too.  I tried to get most of the paint out, but it was a hopeless battle.

Here is a look at the product and the damage.

It's not horribly noticeable in the picture, but the skirt is basically unwearable now.

Unless, of course, you are a Sticky Genius, like myself.  Then there is always SOMETHING to be done to save it.

 I decided to cut it into layers and turned the bottom two cuts inside out to help hide the stain.  The fabric looked the same on the wrong side, so it wasn't obvious.  

I re-sewed the side seams and pieced the layers together.

I tried it on and …. I don't know.  I just wasn't loving it.

I didn't like the way it was pulling at the point in the arrow.  

It just felt sloppy and I knew if I left it like this I wouldn't wear it.

(Please excuse my messy room)

I was playing around with it to see if it would work as a dress by pulling up the fold on the top of the skirt and using it as a bodice.  I can't quite pull off the whole tube top thing, so I dug through my stash of trim and found this great brown trim/fabric webbing I used for straps in another project.

Here is what came of the Young at Art disaster skirt turned dress:

I zig zag stitched the brown trim around the top and gave it a halter strap.

I added a zipper because the trim took away the stretch of the jersey, making it more fitted, so I couldn't just slip in it.

I could have done a better job with the zipper.  I ran out of brown trim, but I might buy a little and put a  little strap with button closure to hide the gap at the top of the zipper.  I shouldn't have left any of the slack at the top of the zipper when I sewed it in.  

Over all I feel like I saved the skirt and turned my Young at Art disaster into an art project of its own.

It's definitely a summer time dress.  I can't wait until it warms up to wear it.  I'm dying to show the other moms that were there to witness my paint snafu how I cleaned up my mess.

To view this project in more detail, please feel free to visit my blog:

Sticky Genius