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July 26, 2012


I only wish it had looked like this on me!
So, I have this Apt 9 dress.  I saw it at Kohl's a few years ago and fell in love with the peacock/paisley pattern and the soft sheer layer.

I bought in a rush, thinking it perfect for a cruise.  A summery mix of comfortable yet possibly formal, and long enough to resist those updraft winds that cause you to pull a Marilyn Monroe on the upper decks.  However, I soon realized that I probably should have bought a smaller size.  To be precise, I am not busty enough to fill it out.  And with the double layer sheer fabric, it made it all the more obvious.  The bust DROOPED.  It was awful.
Me in the dress.  Not nearly as exciting.

The boob droop is obvious here.  It's definitely not me.
Note how much I've shortened the straps!

Great fabric, but it droops even when i'm not in it!

So, having discovered the Refashionista blog and being fascinated by both her way of looking at clothes (what else could this dress be?) and her boldness in attacking preexisting clothing with her scissors, I decided to follow her lead.  I would lose the dress either way, as I was too embarrassed to wear it!



My inspiration dress, but not
enough fabric for the sleeves.  Too bad!
I have another sheer layered dress that I love, so I decided I would copy that directly.  It's a very basic shift dress, with an elastic waistband, and I figured I could copy it with minimal problems.








Fortunately the dress was super long, so I had plenty of fabric to work with!  I merely hacked off the top right under the band and carefully set to work.  

I would have posted a tutorial, but totally messed up.  I was trying to keep the lower half and the layers of the dress together, but that didn't work the way I was thinking.   I had tried just pinning outlines of the front and back at the top, but didn't think thoroughly about turning it right side out.  There's a lot of right and wrong sides in a two layer dress!  Fortunately I had done minimal cutting so I was able to fix it quickly by merely folding the excess fabric over the outer edge and restitching.  I'll add bias tape later on.
After: comfy summer dress!

The amazingly obvious white elastic will be gone as soon as the darker elastic I ordered arrives, and I may look for some matching ribbon to better decorate the top (which is very basic).

I can't wait to wear it again!

I may or may not do this again.  I do have a beautiful long skirt that has unfortunately developed holes near the buttons at the left hip, so I'm trying to figure out a way to fix it without destroying the style.  It's brown paisley and tea length, and goes perfectly with my brown suede boots!

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