Girl’s Dress to Mom’s Skirt tutorial

A while ago I ordered dresses for the 2 younger girls for the 4th of July.  Sadly the girl I ordered them from had one nightmare after another with the shipment.  She didn’t receive any of the size 2/3 dresses and there were issues with all the other sizes.  I didn’t get the Goose’s dress (of course it was a 2/3) and the size 8 I ordered was quite large and the navy blue top was all messed up, the dots were painted on instead of dyed so they were all a little flawed to begin with and then the heat in shipping had them all sticking together making the situation even worse.  I paid next to nothing for the dress and we are trying to get things straightened out with the supplier but when I saw it I thought I could still use it for SOMETHING.  Then I bought my 1st maxi skirt and I knew exactly what I was going to make.

Here is the original dress:

While the kids and I were watching a movie one night I sat and picked the seam that attached the navy to the chevron.

It then looked like this:

As you can sort of see it has a bit of a gather already.  I used that to my advantage.

I didn’t want to lose any of the length so instead of doing an encased elastic waistband I bought some of the really nice soft wide elastic that is made to be seen and used that.  I had never used that type of elastic before but one of my girls has a skirt with exposed elastic so I used theirs as an example for how I wanted mine.  I just wrapped the elastic around my waist to see how long I needed it to be and then took about an inch off.

Then I folded it in half and using 1/2″ seam allowance I did a tight straight stitch.

I then opened it up and stitched the 2 sides down flat, it made a nice soft flat waistband.

Once I had my waistband assembled I used the middle back (my seam) to find the center front and the center of both sides.  I then found all 4 points on my skirt and matched them up and pinned them together.  This worked well for me when it came to sewing the waistband to the skirt.  I just stretched the elastic from one point to the next and sewing right sides together with a longer straight stitch attached the skirt to the waistband.

I loved the end product on the hanger:

And was pretty happy with how my outfit turned out for the 4th:

Cardi – Nordstrom Rack

White T – Downeast

Skirt – by me

Flip Flops – Old Navy

Necklace – Penny & Tillie

As always if you have any questions don’t hesitate to ask, I still am pretty awful about these tutorials but maybe it’ll help you anyway.

Have a beautiful weekend.  We’re headed out of town and can’t wait to see family!

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