Refashion No. 5 - Mismatched dress into a shirt and a skirt

I have bought this dress the other day, because I have loved its top - I have been wanting a stripey summer T-shirt so much - and even if the bottom went into scraps it would still be well worth the price (around 5 USD)! It was a 100% cotton dress, and I simply had to have it...

 

Mismatched dress

 

Naturally, the first issue on my agenda was to carefully unpick the seams connecting the shirt and the skirt. Next up, as I preferred an invisible seam, I have opted for cross stitch (also known as catch stitch) which is perfect for hemming the stretchy fabrics, allowing for flexibility of the hem and being virtually invisible. It basically looks like this:

 

Cross stitch

After this, I had my new sailor shirt done! AWESOOOOME!

 

 

 

 

Next up was the remaining bottom of the dress, aka the skirt. As a skirt, on it's own it probably was fine as it was, only I really disliked it's length being too short for me. So, the elastic had to go, leaving inner and outer side of the fabric casing behind. Trying to find the adequate shade of green fabric to match one of the green colours, it suddenly occurred to me that red would be way to go. So I grabbed a stretched old long-sleeved t-shirt which was sitting in my stash as a solution to my problem:

 

Ugly, eh?

 As it was somewhat discoloured at the sides, I have trimmed down the part of the front and the back I needed, turned it over and stitched again. Then, I have attached the tube I made from the shirt to the skirt, pinned and stitched twice to encapsulate raw ends of the skirt fabric previously forming waist, and my fabulous new summer skirt was done!

 

Awesome, eh?