The Butterfly Dress

This dress was the next item that inspired me from my gifted bag of un-wanted clothing. I loved that it had a hood on it and was super light weight material. I decided the dress needed some darkness, so I also chose this black athletic top to alter. 

Then I got to work transforming..

Step #1

Parts of the hem on this dress were furling up on the bottom so I decided to use that to my advantage and sew the hem up giving it a more un-polished look.

Step #2

I cut off the bottom part of the dress from the top, and cut the black top in half under the bust. Then sewed them together keeping the original stitches from the dress. 

Step #3

The dress was very wide and had no shape whatsoever, so I took it in on the sides by a lot and gave it a bit of a curve to make it a little more shapely. 

Step #4

I cut off the sleeves by the elbow and gave them a hem with a double line stitch to match the original sleeve cuff. 

Step #5

I now needed to attach the hood. I cut the hood off of the dress with a one inch allowance. I wanted to keep the collar of the black top and the dress so I doubled up and sewed the hood collar right next to the black top collar. I thought this looked kinda cool. I wanted it to be different.

Step #6

The material of this dress is very clingy so I took another article of clothing from the bag. This long, tan colour top to attach to the inside as a slip.

(inside out with slip attached)

Step #7

I didn’t quite like how the dress attached to the shirt under the bust, so I made a strip of black material sewed into a tube to cover up where the two materials meet as to even out the line. This made a big difference. 

Since this dress is very casual I paired it with black tights and casual shoes. This is usually not my style but for some reason I felt inspired to take it this way.

-alyrocco-