Dress to Skirt

So, I bought a dress the other day. $15 for a plus size, brown knit, tube dress (I guess - no sleeves anyway). When I got home I was pretty sure I was crazy, but I had a vision for it. The trick there is to get it done before the vision escapes you, or else you are crazy. So it got washed and dried, and I set to work on it at the earliest possible moment. But I am getting ahead of myself. Here is the original item:

I'm only guessing it was supposed to be a dress. It's really long on me as a skirt, and I don't have short legs.

My first order of business was to see how long I actually wanted it. I was hoping I could just cut off that top part, fold over the top of the skirt, and insert some elastic, but it was going to be a little shorter than my vision then. So, I took out the tack-down stitches from the top part (it was about 6-8 inches wide once not folded over), cut off about 2 inches of that, and folded the rest down, roughly in half:

In this picture you can sort of see the piece of thin elastic that's been stitched over in two rows. Well, I stitched my folded over piece along the top row of that stitching - if that makes sense. I made a casing, leaving about 3 inches open.

Through those 3 inches, I threaded some wide elastic (the length of my waist) all the way through the casing. Then I stitched the ends of the elastic together, being careful to make sure the elastic wasn't twisted inside the casing. At this point, it's a good idea to make sure you measured the elastic correctly; try on the skirt. If you like the way it fits, sew up the 3 inch opening. If you don't like how it fits, adjust as necessary. I ended up adjusting mine after I sewed up the opening (it was late. I was exhausted. I didn't want to try it on when I should have. It did fit... etc. etc. etc. It fits much better now.). I also added a line of stitching from the center back seam straight up to the top of the waist band as well. My casing was really a little too big for my elastic, so it was laying weird. Thankfully the line of stitching seems to have helped that.

The finished product! It's floor length on me, but that was my vision. Anybody who's been following me on Pinterest lately knows that I've been slightly obsessed with knit maxi skirts. I'm definitely happy to add one to my wardrobe for $15 and maybe an hour of work (probably not even that).