How I Got Dressed Up

...when I had nothing to wear. 

That's me alright.

I'm wearing a transformed old pants suit I made along time ago out of suede fabric with satiny lapels and cuffs.  Here's the original pattern for the kimono-like jacket & pants so you can see what it used to look like:

way too small now

To make-over the top, I got rid of the lap over and just had it open down the center front. 

like so.

I found some cool fabric from my stash and created side inserts that flowed into the underarm sleeves as gussets.  

yep.

 

At the last minute I added some of the fabric pieces to the shoulder to integrate the look.

 hand-stitching these on

For the pants, I actually still had bits of the same suede fabric leftover in my stash (!) and used it to create  side panels at the hips to give me the room I needed.  It was easy to do since the pants zipped in the back.  Then I just seam-ripped the inner leg seams from the end of the zipper down to the hem.  To form the skirt, I stitched it back up, leaving a front and back slit at knee length.  (see first picture).  I haven't decided yet if I'm going to leave it as is, or add a pleat, or what.


To find out more about the ensemble I put together, visit Project Minima.  And thanks for looking.