Upcycling an Old Dress into a New Skirt

Over twenty years ago I went to Indonesia with my family for a mission trip, it was such a great learning experience. I will admit that I didn't really understand what a great gift it was to get to go overseas at such a young age but now I really see what a gift it was. The best part of that is actually that I got a dress that was super cute and it hung in my closet at my parents house for years. One of the last visits home that I had my mom asked if I wanted the dress to remake into something else. I wasn't quite sure what I would make with it. As I looked at the dress over the next few weeks I finally realized that since graphic prints were back in I was going to remake the dress into a skirt.

I cut the top of the dress off and since it was a free flowing dress there was lots of room. In the end I decided to cut the dress off at a length where it would hit about knee length and would sit about two inches below my belly button.

I made sure to cut the dress evenly and then I ironed it so that I could turn the edges over just a bit and then fold the edge over one inch and pin down. This is the casing for the elastic so that the skirt stays on my body.

I will admit that I wanted to use a 1 inch elastic but unfortunately the casing was not quite large enough once I sewed it shut so I used the 3/4" elastic that I bought. To thread the elastic I attached a safety pin and then pulled the elastic through, this was much more difficult than I expected since it was a tight fit...

Once that was done I remeasured my waist and subtracted about 1 1/2 to two inches from that for the elastic. I sewed it together and then sewed the elastic ends together and then the hole shut.

Check out the super cute skirt that I made!!!

I really enjoyed wearing this the other night out with friends. It was good, the only downside is that I think the elastic is just a tad too big so it doesn't seem to really be a great fit. I think I need about 1/2-1 inches smaller in the elastic. Oh well for now it is going to work out just fine. I styled it with gold jewels and some cute flat sandals. I look terrible in these pics but I thought that I looked really cute in person. This upcycling could be addicting but I don't know how it is going to go, hopefully there will be more of these posts soon.