hi-lo dress

A few days ago I was shopping at Goodwill to outfit my husband for his summer internship.  I wandered away while he was trying on clothes and found this gem:

The colors screamed, "SUMMER" so loud I had to have it.  It was a pricey purchase for me, at $6.25, but that goes to show the extent of my love at first sight.  First, I hacked off the sleeves.  I left about an inch of the sleeve intact to give myself some fabric for the hem so I wouldn't have to make the strap any more slender than it was.  Think:  a hem at this point would have meant spaghetti straps.

Honestly, I should have really ripped out the seam and done it more cleanly since there were so many ruffles in the sleeve, but I was really excited to finally be sewing on my new table and get a new dress for Casual Friday.  Next order of business was to pin and take in the sides a little (not shown) and bring up the waist of the skirt.  Again, when bringing up the waist, I should have picked the seam and resewn, but I didn't want to! I folded over the amount I wanted to move it up and then sewed very close to the current waistline.

Lastly, I folded the dress in half, down the very front (think: line between your bosom), laid a favorite hi-lo skirt on the waist, and made a half-circle cut.  This made my dress hi-lo.  Some important notes: 1.  Make sure your waist is where you want it to be before you make the cut out. 2. You don't have to cut out the entire side - mine only ended being about have of the bottom hem.  Re-hem the section you cut out and rock it like you own it!  

Sorry for all the cheesy rock analogies - my husband's internship is in geology!!!  My next post is coming soon on how I took all of his over-sized dress shirts in to make them fitted.