The Sew Weekly Sewing Circle

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I hope you all had a great weekend! I was trying to be as productive as I can here at BeingZhenya and bring to life a refashion I’ve been planning for a while! Transforming a maxi dress into an LBD with peplum!

Peplum dresses are extremely popular now, but can be pricey. I found a JIL SANDER dress that runs for $696, and that’s the sale price!

Peplum also works for smoothing out the silhouette , and drawing attention away from a not so perfect abs!

That’s why I think it’s worth giving a try!

Now on to the refashion!

Back in my retail days (which weren’t as long ago :) ) I used to wear a lot of black. So I thrifted a whole bunch of black clothing, and this $9 maxi no brand dress was one of the finds.

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It looks like a giant black noodle, doesn’t it?

The whole refashion took me about 3 hours. All in all it was a perfect Saturday afternoon project!

We are going to start by laying the dress out flat! See the two white lines?

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We are going to cut along those! The bottom one first and use that fabric to make our peplum. To make peplum you need to follow one simple formula:

rrThen measure 20 cm/8 in along both sides and draw another semicircle. And there you have your peplum. You can also vary the length of it, making it as short or as long as you want!

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Since I used the leftover material, I ended up with 2 semicircles.

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Now we are going to sew along the edges to make it into a full circle and hem the outer edge as well!

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TIP: Because of the fabric, I used the widest stitch setting on my machine!

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Next cut the dress along the waistline, add peplum and the skirt, and sew everything together! Make sure all the edges are aligned properly!

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You may have noticed that there is one suspicious bar of soap popping up in my pictures, that’s what I use to draw on the material, I really need to make it to Jo-Ann’s and get a chalk marker, but the soap has been working out great so far!

Now we are going to take in the skirt. The original dress had an A-line shape, and that caused the new dress’s skirt to be A-line as well, which I thought was too much! I preferred it straight. So I took it in on each side like so (about 1.5 inches on each side)

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Then I sewed along the lines on the machine, hemmed the dress and viola:

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Now I have something to wear to dinner Sam and I are going to on Friday!

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And of course it goes well with my favorite metallic belt!

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I hope you enjoyed this refashion! I know I did, especially after hearing all the compliments from my husband! And he is my highest critic!

Xo,

Z

Views: 161

Comment by Michelle L on January 15, 2013 at 4:26am
Great refashion, you make it look easy!
Comment by Kelly B. on January 15, 2013 at 9:15pm

Your new dress is very smart looking and very fashionable, more so than the shapeless original.  What a deal, too, because it looks like you paid a pretty penny!  One would never guess it's a refashion, you did a great job.  I want to try that now too.  (It's true husbands can be the biggest critics of our sewing, but, yes, they can also give the best compliments!)

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