Bow Dress

 Snip, snip, sew, sew, new dress... HELLO !

Another deconstruction, upcycle project here, this time I used a woman's size 6 bebe dress made of light blue silk dupioni. You can see how the original dress (didn't) fit my daughter in the before photo...

 The inspiration for this came from the cp blog, where her inspiration was a RED Valentino dress worn by Elle Fanning in Teen Vogue February 2012.

This is how I turned a used woman's size 6 bebe dress into an Easter dress for my 4 year old daughter...

 First with a seam ripper I removed the invisible zipper & hook & eye closure.

 Secondly I removed the lining from the dress.

 I cut open one seam in the front of the dress & one seam in the back of the dress, then cut off an inch or two.

 In the front I removed the the top left & right side panels, reshaped them (cutting off the top of the straps, etc) & sewed them back on. I added 2 inverted pleats in the front & hand sewed on 2 bows. Bias tape was added to the arm holes.

From the fabric pieces that I cut off, I made the 3 bows & bias tape, but the bias tape wasn't cut on the bias as I didn't have enough fabric.

 I must say that I did do some strategic cutting as there were some stains in the dress that did not come off when I hand washed it.

 You can see a seam on the hair bow because that's the only way I could figure out how to make another bow with the very little remaining fabric I had.

No patterns were used, I made this specifically to my daughter's measurements, so she had like 59 fittings !  OK maybe not that many, but you get the picture, I don't have a dress form, so instead she had to do a lot of fittings.

This dress cost $0 to make as the original dress was given to me as a gift. I used some thread & electricity to run my sewing machine, otherwise I only used the fabric from the original dress & reinstalled the original 16 inch invisible zipper & the hook & eye closure.

There are only a hand full of tiny fabric scraps left over.

If you're interested in sewing a version of this in a woman's size, here is a pattern that might work for you:
Simplicity 2282 which was inspired by a vintage 1960s Simplicity 6225

Happy Easter everyone !

PS this type of challenge is my favorite to do, if you like this sort of project, too, feel free to check out these other ones I did:
:: silver bridesmaid skirt to jingle bell dress
:: light blue bridesmaid dress to Cinderella dress-up dress