Thifting and Repurposing

Once school was out for the summer, I started helping the kids clean out their rooms.   My daughter LOVES dress up stuff.   Most of her dress up clothes were getting pretty small for her.   I bargained with her that if she would clean out the too-small stuff, I would replace it.  The plan would be to go to my favorite thrift store and buy small ladies dresses or larger girl dresses.  My inspiration came from a memory I have of childhood.   Both my parents worked full time and summer days were spent at my Grandmother's house.   One cool thing about Grandmother's house was Great-Grandmother lived with her.  Both ladies were sweet about encouraging creativity.   They gave me a couple of old muumuus to play dress up with.   If I still had those things, I totally would restyle them and rock them...but they are long since gone to the Goodwill.  *Sigh* Lest I digress, I loved playing with these muumuus because they were long, soft, and silky.  

In June, the kids and I made a trip to Value Village in search of dress up clothes.  I gave my daughter a budget of $7-8.   As we walked into the store, I also pointed out that everything marked with an orange tag was 50% off.   Our first stop was the Ladies small dress section.   My daughter found a couple of dresses that she loved.  They were only about $1.50 each because of the orange tag.   Next, we moved to the girls section and looked in the 10/12s.   These would be huge on my tiny seven year old, but would be wonderful dress up clothes.   We found a couple there of dresses in that section too.   She got 5 dresses for under $7.  All the dresses but one had orange tags!   Sweet!   While looking through the ladies dresses I found this:

I had visions of shortening it, throwing on a skinny white belt and loving my new summer dress.   I love the New Dress A Day website.   Marisa makes some super cute stuff out ugly old clothes.   I was hoping to pull a Marisa transformation.   Princess Kate also crossed my mind a couple of times.   The dress was a classic Kate-like print.  I checked for holes, tears, and stains and there were none.   Unfortunately, in my zeal, I broke a very important rule of thrifting...I forgot to check the zipper.   I washed all of the clothes when I got home.  Then I discovered the zipper on my dress was stuck.  I tried unsticking it, but had no luck.  I thought about putting a new one in, but the dress was made from a very light fabric.  Replacing the zipper would be a mess, so I needed a plan B.  

In the end, I decided to shorten it into a skirt.  I measured how long I wanted the skirt and measured from the bottom up.  I added a couple of inches for attaching to a waistband.   Next, I made a waistband that was flat in the front and gathered in the back on elastic.   This helped me avoid a zipper again.  I originally was going to make the waistband to match the rest of the skirt from the scraps, but I kept having problems with it bunching under my machine.   After rethreading my machine and promising to buy a new machine, I finally looked at the settings on my machine.   I realized little hands had taken my thread tension from 2.75 to 9.   Those same hands also made my presser foot pressure 100%.   There was not enough fabric to try again for a matching waistband, so I just used some white muslin I had leftover from another project.   Once my machine was behaving again, I gathered my skirt, attached it to the waistband and finished it.  

I threw on a tank and jacket I already had with my new skirt and added a cute blingy belt my sister-in-law gave me.   Ahh, cool summer skirt, all due to a broken zipper.