Top: Princess Highway

Skirt: Remixed from Sohomode Teadress

Cardigan: Woolovers

Shoes: Softwalk via Shoebuy

Thank you to everyone who took the time to comment on my last post. I’m going to be dreadfully lazy and not reply individually the way I usually try to, but I really appreciate the support. I’m a glass-half-full kind of person, so now the shock’s wearing off I’m trying to really focus on the positive and look at this as an opportunity, rather than a set-back.

One of the “positives” is that it’s given me a bit of free time to catch up on some of the jobs and projects I’ve had sitting around the house, and this remixed dress/skirt is one of them.

I had this lovely tea dress made for me last year by Louise at Sohomode, and when I sent her my measurements I was probably the slimmest I’d been for a very long time. Now that I’m happy – and eating! – again a lot of my clothes aren’t fitting as comfortably as they used to, and this dress was one of them.

I wasn’t prepared to give it up, so I decided to do another remix similar to my old Gorman dress-to-skirt remix, with the shortcut being that Louise’s tea-dresses come ready-made with a belt that could easily be re-purposed as a waistband.

So, the project is basically exactly the same as what I did last time, but here’s a tutorial anyway!

Step 1: I unpicked the waistband of the skirt from the bodice, and cut the zipper – a little higher, so that I can insert it into the new waistband. If you’re going to do this project yourself – and I can’t emphasize this enough – don’t forget to have the zipper foot down and the zip open when you cut the zipper. Otherwise you’ll be left with an unzippabable zipper, and will either have to try and wrangle the foot back onto the teeth, or start from scratch with a new zip.

Step 2: So I needed a little bit more room in the waist, which meant that I had to alter the beautiful belt that all of Louise’s dresses come with. I took a snip of extra fabric from the bodice to add an inch or so to the ends of the belt.Step 3: I made a little rectangular tube of fabric, sewed it right rides together to the end of the belt, flipped it outside in and finished the edges, and voila! New waistband!

Step 4: First things first I finished off the top edge of the skirt with a zigzag seam to prevent it from fraying, then basted two rows of wide stitching that will help me make the gathers. Then I pinned the skirt to my new waistband right-sides together at the front centre, side seams, with the ends of the waistband slightly overlapping the loose ends of the zipper.

Step 5: To create the gathers I carefully pulled the top threads from the two lines of basting, and eased the gathers around the circumference of the skirt until skirt waist and waistband matched up in lengthStep 6: After I felt like the gathering around the waistband was even I pinned, and pinned, and pinned some more until the waistband was securely pinned to the skirt, then I sewed the two together, wrapping the extra length of waistband around the top of the zipper. Then I flipped the waistband up, pressed the gathered skirt flat, and finished the waistband off with another straight seam.And the result is a new skirt, which I think looks particularly good with a stripey tee-shirt.

…and goes even better with this lovely brooch that one of my wonderful former sales team members gave me as a going-away gift. I think that’s one of the things that I’m finding the hardest about what happened; having to say goodbye (at least within a professional context) to some of my favourite people.