the tragic whale

We all know I love to sew, but I generally steer clear of doing anything with clothing. In the past I tried to make wearable objects but even altering pre-existing things seems to be a giant hassle for me. However, I recently found an adorable dress at Target that I couldn’t say no to. The only problem was that it’s a tight dress and hugged my hips. I hate that.

So I bought two and attempted to fix it. The only way to conquer a fear is to face it. This is the story of how I didn’t waste $40 and made something I can WEAR!

First, using another dress as a model, I cut both dresses at the waist. My idea was to make the two skirts into one and then reattach it to a top.

Using that other dress, I measured the paneling on the skirt so I could make a pattern.

I only ended up using the triangle part, which measures 1/4 inch at the top and 13 at the bottom (17 inches tall / two pieces of paper taped together).

I traced and cut two triangles from the extra skirt:

I cut the non-triangled skirt up the middle and pinned the triangles in place.

Sewed it up:

And tucked the new skirt back up into the top piece and reattached it. I did have to add a couple of darts because the new skirt was wider than the other one.

But here it is! I paired it with a belt because the waist is a little bunchy in spots (from ripping out seams, adding darts, and then sewing over it again).

I somehow ended up adding a little more than an inch to the length in the process, which is awesome because I like my dresses to fall right above my knees. And it won’t ride up because it flows off my hips instead of sticking to them.

For a first try, I’m really pleased with how this turned out!