Well, I was inspired by Marisa Lynch on New Dress A Day to remake something. I got the chance when my husband and I planned a murder mystery dinner party to thank some friends for helping us work on our house. We chose a western theme - Murder in the Wild West and I was supposed to be the saloon owner - Lily White. The cost of costumes are too high for me right now so I found a dress at a thrift store for about $1 and started planning how to remake it. It was definitely an 80's prom dress!! Pale pink and lots of lace!! :) And of course it was not the right size!
Well, the first thing was to remove the underskirt because it was way too long! I was going to cut off the top and add elastic so it looked more like apetticoat. The frst thing I discovered was the dress must have been pinned/basted together and then everything sewn at one time with one seam! When I started rippping the seam, the bodice and skirt came apart so I had to pin it and seam it back together. The other weird thing, at least it was to me, was the zipper started on the bodice and then went down into the skirt and was sewn to the underskirt! So it had to be moved to the "outer" skirt also.
The next step was to remove the really big section of lace around the neckline and the bows that went around the bottom of the dress. I don't recall seeing too many pictures of saloon girls with cute little bows on their dresses. :)
Once everything was removed, I attempted to die the dress red. Well, I don't know if I didn't know what I was doing, or it was the material that wasn't receptive to the dye! LOL After 4 attempts I ended up with a lavender dress and said that's it! I also tried to dye the underskirt black and it came out a dark purple. I guess I didn't clean the washing machine enough but it ended up working because it went with the lighter color of the dress.
I made a corset to wear with it next. Pretty basic but I learned a couple things. I need to pay more attention to the interfacing I buy and not trust what the person selling it to me says I need. Also, it is better to mark the holes for the grommets than do them one at a time! :) Because of the interfacing ( it was two-sided and not one-sided so I had to figure out how to apply it raither than follow the pattern.), I had an unfinished bottom edge and decided to use bias tape to finish it. Well, I didn't like how that looked because the blacks didn't match, so I added fringe to cover it! In the end, I really liked how it looked with the dress!
The last thing I did to the dress to balance it out, was add black lace around the neckline and the bottom because the dress was so light compared to the corset.
So below is the fnished product!
We had a great time with our friends at our murder mystery dinner party - Murder in the Wild West!!
I can't even believe I am going to admit this...I think I have that same pink dress! I bought it as a Little Bo peep costume from a thrift store, but Im pretty sure it was a 80's bridesmaid dress. I think someone needs to start a blog about revamping bridesmaid dresses...endless possibilities, and gosh only knows, we all have one or two in the back of our costume!
ReplyDeleteLove yours though --Western Saloon style is the peek of Chic!