Quick tutorial: How to turn a dress into a playsuit

After blogging about New Dress a Day yesterday I was inspired to do a little re-working of my own.

Before the transformation!

I found this retro St Michael frock in a second hand sale a little while ago and had been pondering what to do with it. I really loved the pattern and the shirt-style top but the skirt was long, shapeless and sack-like.

After some consideration I decided it would look better as a short playsuit, keeping the detail on top but making it more fun and less frumpy.

The shorts on this playsuit were loose and easy to copy

To work out the pattern I looked at this playsuit which I bought from Urban Outfitters last summer. I decided to copy the shorts as they’re loose-fitting, a simple shape and not too fiddly.

If you want to do this at home then any pair of loose-ish shorts should work just as well.

I folded the playsuit inside out and then in half to get the panel shape. Then I folded my dress in half and traced around the outline in pencil, leaving enough room for the seams and hem.

Just about to start sewing!

After unfolding my dress and cutting out the pattern, you can see there is a little ‘flap’ in the middle.  This will be sewn together to create the crotch area.

It’s a good idea to pin the seams together and try on at this point to make sure everything fits!

I zig-zag stitched all along the edges to prevent fraying, and then hemmed the ends and sewed the crotch together to create some shorts.

The finished result!

Et voila! A cute little playsuit which I can wear with sandals in the summer or black tights and ankle boots when it’s a bit chillier. Much better than the frumpy sack I started off with!

What did you think of this tutorial? Was it easy to follow? Please let me know below!

Inspiration: New dress a day

Ok so this blog‘s been around for quite a while, but I thought I’d post a little bit about it for anyone unaware of its amazingness.

Marisa Lynch, author of New Dress a Day.

Californian Marisa Lynch decided at the end of 2009 to give up buying new clothes, and instead scoured thrift stores and garage sales for pieces she could update on her sewing machine – and posting the results daily on her New Dress a Day blog.

Marisa posts before and after pics as well as snaps of the reworking process, and gives detailed step-by-step explanations on all the changes she makes.

Having come to the end of her first year, she’s now taking donations from fans – send her a second hand dress which you like the essence of but isn’t quite right and let her work her magic.

If you’re interested in DIY and recycled fashion, but perhaps don’t have the skills to make a full 24-piece capsule wardrobe from scratch, or simply need a bit of inspiration on how to make all those great dresses you see in charity shops a little bit more wearable, then this blog is quite simply a treasure trove of ideas!

You can also become a fan or the project on Facebook and follow Marisa on Twitter.

Should you use a dressmaker’s dummy?

My sister has a dressmaker’s dummy in her bedroom. “This is so cool!” I said , the first time I saw it, perched elegantly on its long wooden legs next to her full-length vintage mirror, its neck strewn with rows of beads. I picked up a skirt and scarf and absent-mindedly began to dress it.

“Do you use this all the time when you make your clothes?” I asked my sis.

“No, not really,” she replied.  “I find it easier to just measure the material against myself. And anyway, I think that thing’s actually bigger than me!”

“What about dressing it up, do you use it to tell which outfits will work?”

“No – I just do that in my head!”

Many home-sewers swear by the dressmaking dummy. Fiddling around with paper patterns to get those tweaks and fits just right can take hours, and it’s far easier to make adjustments when you can see it on your body (or, at least, something resembling it!)

However, my sister comes from a very non-traditional school of sewing. She has never used a pattern in her life, and nor does she intend to. Her home sewing journey started by wrapping bits of material against herself, sticking in pins where she wanted it to join, and sewing it together just like that. Something as old-skool as a dressmaker’s dummy was never going to suit her.

I, on the other hand, am a half-and-half girl. I studied textiles at school so am comfortable using patterns, but I’ve also been influenced by my sister’s approach and taken to wrapping material around myself, pattern-free. However, I find the measuring-against-myself process something of a nightmare. I can’t always figure out what I’m doing when I don’t have a 360 degrees view of it, and end up with wonky waistbands and diagonal seems. Great. A dummy really would come in handy sometimes.

The only thing putting me off is the cost, and the nightmare of having to buy another one every time you loose or put on weight. But luckily I’ve stumbled across a fab little guide to making your own. Even though they don’t look quite as cool in your room as the real thing, all you need is some duct tape, scissors and filling material, and you can re-do it any time your body changes. Amazing!

So really, whether you use a dressmaker’s dummy is all down to your personal style and how you go about making your clothes. But as for me, I reckon I’ll be off to purchase some duct tape pretty soon…

How to choose a sewing machine

If you are concerned about environmentally-friendly fashion then a sewing machine is a must. You can use it to customise, re-work and recycle clothes far more easily than by hand and in a fraction of the time. They may seem expensive, but a good one will last for years and save you plenty of money on splashing out on new clothes when they rip, tear or fall out of fashion.

I finally purchased my sewing machine (pictured above) 18 months ago after years of experimentation ripping up and customising my clothes. Aged 14 I would don a home-shredded vest top, minskirt and fishnets before stomping out of my house in huge DM’s and far too much eyeliner, much to my parents’ dismay. Then in my late teens I discovered the rave scene and would spend hours painstakingly hand-stitching matching fluffy neon outfits, crafting hairpieces out of multi-coloured pipe cleaners and painting UV dots on my face.

Environmental issues weren’t really in my mind when I invested in the machine – I just wanted to learn to make decent, wearable clothes rather than my slap-dash creations that fell apart after a few days.

I would recommend my model (the Juki HZL-60) for new sewers- it is one of the easiest machines I’ve ever used, so perfect for a beginner. It’s cheap as well – there’s no point in splashing out on a pricey machine if you’re not sure home sewing is for you yet. And because it’s good quality it’ll be easy to sell on if you decide it was an expensive mistake.

Always ask for a demonstration in the shop and a ‘test run’ yourself so you can see how easy to use it is (or isn’t!). If there are specific features you want, such as embroidery or over-locking, the model will be more expensive so it’s up to you to decide if it’s worth your cash. I was also given a free in-store tutorial – ask your supplier if they can give you one too.

There are usually second-hand models for sale on eBay and similar places, but you may want to consider whether it’s worth the risk to buy one without road-testing it first. A tricky-to-use sewing machine can bring hours of frustration, tears and dodgy hems!

Resources

• Which? has brilliant guide to choosing a sewing machine
• John Lewis also has this guide, although it is biased towards the models they stock
• Readers at craftforum have put together this thread, which contains some sound advice
• A dress a day blog has a helpful, if rather long, guide for beginners

My guilty fashion conscience, or the tale of how this blog was born…

I am obsessed with clothes.

I love them. I love pouring over them in magazines, hunting through markets and second hand shops for them, putting them together, taking them apart, re-working them, accessorising them, dressing them up, dressing them down.

I suppose it’s a pretty shallow hobby to have, obsessing over what I’m wearing and what I look like. But every one of us has a relationship with clothes of some kind, often a a very complicated one. Each time we step out the door we’re choosing to say something to the world through what we’re wearing. And besides, clothes are fun! Dressing yourself is creative – it’s like playtime, like being a kid again.

The issue that concerns me with my clothes obsession is its ethical implications. In these credit-crunched times, us recessionistas will inevitably be cutting back on the pricier brands and turning our eye to bargain fashion. Women’s magazines are featuring ’credit crunch fashion’ specials packed with garments costing little more than a packet of crisps. But who’s made those Primark dresses which are so easy to pull of the rails without a second thought? And where do these dresses go when they inevitably start falling apart or out of fashion – on a landfill site most probably. We could always buy second hand or make and customise our own clothes but let’s face it, most of us don’t have the spare time to always do this. And when you know you can get that must-have item on the high street for only a couple of quid more than it’ll cost you to make it at home, then why bother?

So this is my aim: to blog on DIY, environmentally friendly fashion that doesn’t compromise on affordability, convinience, and – most importantly – style. I’ll be alerting you to ethical labels and boutiques that aren’t full of hesian sacks, passing on customising tips and DIY skills, as well as the normal trend-spotting and commenting.

And in an attempt to soothe both my recession-bitten purse and my ethical conscience, I am challenging myself to survive on NO new clothes – only ones I have made myself or re-worked second hand ones, the results of which I shall be sharing for your viewing pleasure. Wish me luck and follow my blog!