Project Toddler Runway - Accessory Challenge

I only wish I could have been in on this from the get-go. Maybe next time. :-D But Shwin & Shwin are having link parties for people who aren't official contestants to post their interpretations of the challenges.

I've had this dress in my "refashion" pile for the longest time. Both my girls got a lot of wear out of it, and I didn't just want to toss it because the skirt part is still in great shape and the fabric is SO soft. And the beads are still attached! How cool is that? I mean, just because there are chocolate milk stains on the top doesn't mean it's still not usable, right?

Okay, so I finally got up the gumption to work on this project. I've been feeling kinda poorly lately (as my late great grandmother would say) and so I had a bunch of stuff waiting for me to get better and get back to work.

So, here we go. First I carefully, CAREFULLY detached the skirt and petticoat from the bodice and lining. Then I serged the petticoat and skirt back together making sure to keep the fuschia band out of the way. Disengaging the knife worked very well for this. And for some bizarre reason, my knife on the serger keeps bungling things.

I was going to just make a skirt out of it and call it a day, but I really felt that a dress was the better option. But did I have any leftover fabric that would match? As luck would have it, I had just enough scraps of green gauzy stuff to cut a whole new bodice from Simplicity 2943, an "inspired by project runway" pattern. Which is totally appropriate, no?

I used the bodice and sleeve pieces from the floral dress on the left. I omitted the band of trim, though. Because the fabric was SO diaphanous and itchy, I lined the bodice and sleeves fully with a vintage crib sheet. Why, Miz Scarlett, I can't believe you would do such a thing! Frankly my dear, I was out of velvet curtains. So fitted vintage crib sheet it was! The fabric matched the weight/hand of the original skirt very well. Almost like they came from the same lot. But I know better!

I even scavenged the invisible zipper from the original dress to put a size zip in. Why? Because the pattern called for knits but I was using wovens. And there's nothing worse than getting stuck and not being able to get in our out of a dress. So I whipped out the bodice in a little over an hour including serging all the raw edges and turning over so that everything had an awesome finished look on the outside.

To attach the bodice to the original skirt, I zig-zagged the two pieces together and then topstitched the fuschia trim up onto the bodice. The end result? I think it looks pretty sharp myself.

This project cost exactly $0 including the original dress as it was a gift to my oldest daughter 4 years ago from her grandmother. SCORE!