Saturday, 28 December 2013

From a jumper to a dress


That's the journey I took a few weeks ago when I decided to transform two of my old jumpers into a dress for my baby girl. Maybe you are wondering how this idea came to my mind and whether I am not running out of fabric to resort to that. Well, not really. I still have dressmaking fabrics to be made into something.
What else could I do with two old jumpers (not so old in fact, I think I bought them about 7 years ago when I was feeling comfortable wearing short and tight jumpers). Anyway I don't feel comfortable in them anymore and as one of them had a bit of fading near the neckline and the other one had a few tiny stains I could neither give them to charity, nor sell them. And throwing them into the bin also wasn't a good option. So that is how I started toying with the idea to make something out of them.
And since I had a baby girl I found that thoughts of lovely girly dresses and accessories were circling my mind more than ever. Not that I still don't imagine sewing a fabulous dress or top for myself, but not that often.
Here you can see how the two jumpers looked before cutting them. Nice green colours!


It's very challenging to make something from another garment as it's very restricting in terms of fabric and you have to adjust the pattern pieces according to the grainline.


For that dress I drew a pattern only for the bodice. The rest of the dress was made just by draping the fabric until I got the a look that appealed to me. It's one of these projects that you don't really know what the final look would be until you get there.


 Here I have experimented with different stitches and some lace. The lace detail wasn't planned at first, but it somehow gives the dress a fresh look. And I felt really happy using it, as I had bought it together with four more laces without being sure what I was going to use them for.


And here is the final look of the dress. In fact there is just a tiny bit more to go - to accessorize it with a fabric flower, but I still haven't quite decided where exactly to place it, so I have left this aside for a while.


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