Spring Dress in Fall

It's only my second time posting here on Refashion Co-op, so let me take a moment to re-acquaint. I'm a beginner refashioner with no sewing machine! (I occasionally use my parents') I like to use vintage items of clothing (usually dresses) and give them small updates, usually staying true to the vintage look. My blog, Craft, Thrift, or Die is a tongue in cheek way to share my DIY attempts as well as cope with depression and anxiety. Anyway, for this project, I started with sheer pink flowery dress with poofy sleeves.

 Like my last post, this dress was also $0.50, which should explain why I purchased it in the first place. It's got a lot of strikes against it: it's pink (I just don't like wearing pink); and the combination of the really high neckline, pouffy sleeves, and long length remind me of...I don't know, something from a polygamist cult?

I'm exaggerating. Normally, when I'm refashioning an item, the sleeves are the first things to go. Making sleeves smaller is too damn advanced for me. I wanted to keep some sleeve and just make them less ginormous. This dress actually had mini shoulder pad-type things for extra sleeve height. 

my attempt to make the sleeve more fitting

After removing a lot of additional fluff from inside the garment, I pinned the top of the sleeves. They still looked weird. I decided I should move on to the neckline and return to the problem area after the easy part. 

 I tried it on, and marked the spot where I would cut the bottom of a v neck. I measured and marked, but I wasn't all that careful. I planned on adding some kind of fancy collar, so the neckline was allowed to look bad.

I tried pinning the sleeves a few more times, eventually cutting and sewing, and lets just say that somewhere a mistake was made. Fine. I hacked them off. After removing the sleeves, I pinned down the edges, and due to a sewing machine malfunction, I ended up hand-stitching as I watched TV. 

 With the hastily sewn v neck done, I considered my options for embellishing it. I had this black collar that I removed from another shirt in my scrap pile. After pinning it, it seemed to heavy and didn't work with the lightweight dress. I thought maybe just a small lace collar would work. I had lace ribbon, but since I wanted something thin, I scavenged lace from somewhere else.

I pinned the lace down, ans used a little fabric glue on the other side.

That's underwear. You see, despite being a petite gal, I've got a big ass. This one time, I bought some medium underwear and when I got home I realized that I ended up with small instead--that detail is not important, all you need to know is that I had a pair of new black panties with a lace trim that I used to make a collar. 

After completing it, I took a few pics, satisfied with the result. Here's what it looked like:

 Nice; but for whatever reason, it stayed folded up on that chair that every disorganized grown up has in their room for which to pile clothes. Then, a few weeks later, I had some inspiration

That's one sweet, little dress that I couldn't replicate in a million years. But, I could throw a little sash around the neckline of my cheap dress. I didn't have much excess material from my dress, since the only thing I cut off was the sleeves and a little triangle. What I did have was a handful of those long. thin, belt/scarf things that I always find at thrift stores. I decided to use a black one. 

I pinned the sash on the shoulders and then in the front on both sides of the v neck. I let it hang just a bit in the back. I hand stitched it in place, only where the pins are. Just in case I changed my mind again, I didn't want it to be attached to securely. Here's the result, take two: 

The sash may have been a little short or thick, because getting a proper bow was tough. I kinda liked it just hanging there, though.

I obviously used photo editing magic to get this picture to look cool. I should also mention that even though the color and floral print say "spring/summer," it's sheer fabric require it to be layered over some kind of slip. When the weather is warm, I like to stick to one layer, especially since I work in a school and they don't air condition us. So, I guess this dress works for fall because I love layering stuff in the cool weather.