Skirt Remodel

The woman at the new-to-me thrift gave me this DaNang skirt. It was ugly--a really ugly tan-ish gold color--and hadn't sold, and she said I could surely do something with it. Im going to have to learn to resist a challenge, though, because I have so many other garments now demanding attention. But I did this one before we went to Art Unraveled and actually remembered to take photos of the process (whoa!), so here you go--

I did not, however, get a photo of the skirt before I dyed it. I dyed it once, and it was still horrendously ugly. So I re-dyed it, leaving it longer, and this time it actually became orange. There wasn't any other color I could dye it (it's not so much that I love having so much orange clothing as that many of the things I dyed are khaki-colored, and you really don't have a lot of over-dyeing color choices unless you're a fan of brown clothes, which I am not).

 Here it is, front and back, after the second dyeing.

 I also dyed some sheer white cotton I got on clearance.

 I had this sheer print left over from one of the altered dresslets--these were long "house dresses" (remember those, anyone?) slash loungewear I'd had for years. I wore them as-is for a while (not as house dresses; I wore them as actual dresses) and then cut them off and cut off the sleeves and used them for summer sleepwear, and then I cut them off again and made dresslets, which I love. I added some beads, and their tissue-thin weight makes them perfect for summer. I wear a tank underneath and my favorite cropped-and-rolled stretch jeans, and I really don't like the skin-tight look. People always says, "Oh, you're so thin; why do you wear such baggy clothing?" Because I wear form-fitting stuff underneath but think skin-tight clothes look skanky, frankly. So I wear something over it. Usually dresslets.

 This is the fabric left from the most recent cut-off.

 I laid it out to see what it would look like.

 Sucked it up and took the scissors and made a cut right up the middle. No measuring.

My original idea here was to use the floral fabric to soften the transition between the skirt and the cotton insert because they weren't exactly the same color.

I made this back gore and then two in the front. Sorry for the photos--the wind was blowing the day we took these~~

I also added a pocket made from part of a t-shirt, doubled and handstitched in place.

It's not hemmed, and the edges are raw. I love it--it's very comfortable (knitted waist with drawstring), and the woman at the shop was really happy with it. This makes no difference--I'm not doing this to sell anything or anything like that; I just like making her happy by taking something she thinks it hopeless and turning it into something she thinks is cool. Plus it means I get more rejects, and that's always fun. Although, as I said, I'm going to have to pull way, way back on the acquisitions part: after this trip to Phoenix and Jeanie Thorn's fabulous shopping assistance (more about which later, for sure), I've got enough projects to last me for YEARS.

That does not mean, of course, that I'm not hitting the thrifts. You can't *not* go look, right? You might miss something fabulous!