SEWN: Sustainability in a remade dress

Sustainability can come in so many different forms. For the past year I’ve been talking about buying less, buying better quality, being more mindful – but it has sometimes felt so unachievable. I read blogs for inspiration but quite often they have the opposite effect. I suddenly want to spend time I don’t have on a particular kind of lifestyle, spend money I don’t have on different products, and that I’m just not up to scratch. But that’s all ridiculous isn’t it? I need to take my lead from my sewing friends that remind me to do keep doing my own thing and not worry about it. Enter #slowsfashionstyling which starts next week in an effort to give the unloved items in your closet some wear.

Along the theme of doing my own thing, I wanted to share you a dress I remade. In its original form it had a load of compliments from random strangers on the street, but I hated wearing it (more on that shortly). In its remade form it has had a grand total of zero compliments after 2 months – not sure whether or not to feel disappointed about that –  but I wear it a lot more and I like it a lot better so all is not lost. I am also posting this now as the annual Refashioners sewing challenge is on again. Unlike previous years, there is no garment type specified for the refashion (previous year themes included refashioning a suit, or refashioning denim). Not sure if my remake is technically a refashion, but I think terminology is irrelevant. For me its all about making the clothes I want to wear, rather than wanting the creative challenge of refashioning for the sake of it.

My original dress 

Original dress

The fabric

I dithered for weeks before buying it as I wasn’t sure what the peach would do for my skin tone. Eventually I caved in  and I like to think that I bought it before it was splashed all over the internet. Later on after I made the dress the fabric became super popular and I got dress stress when I wanted to wear it to a party! You can read the incident here when I wrote about FOMO (fear of missing out).

Why I had to remake the dress

The waist elastic was really uncomfortable and situated too high. The cap sleeves are just holes in the bodice for the arms, and these are folded back twice to finish the seam. Which means the underarm opening isn’t particularly strong even with reinforced stitching. I ripped and repaired it THREE times (twice on one side, one on the other) reaching for things! See this picture because close ups do not lie. You can see also that the buttons are big given the width of the placket.

Rips in tropical dress

The new dress

Pattern hacking

The new bodice is a heavily hacked version of a dress in Japanese pattern book. The pattern was v neck dress with tucks at the waist and 3/4 sleeves. Besides raising the neckline, I wanted to have buttons down the front so I had to mess with the centre front and draft facings. Then I hacked away at the sleeves. Basically all that is left of the original pattern piece is the armhole – because I don’t know how to draft those! I’m tempted to go learn to draft a bodice and sleeve block just for me so I never have to buy a pattern again.

Cutting and laying out

After the unpicking, the pieces at the front bodice were smaller than I wanted – there was a button placket, shoulder panels, a collar, plus the rips I mentioned before. I just ended up making bias strips out of the front bodice and cutting out a part of a facing. You can see what I did in this picture. (PS – it was my first time trying to draw something with paint and markers! I’m pretty happy with the result!). The gathered skirt is the original one, no change there.

Tropical dress illustration – cutting

The pieces you don’t see in the picture are those I cut out of leftover fabric. I had bought yardage based on the original pattern which had a full circle skirt. In the end I didn’t want to use that much fabric, so I made a gathered skirt instead which used a lot less fabric. Lucky I kept it all!

Construction

My friend Christine had kindly bought me some bias binding when we met up a couple of months ago, so I used this to give a bit of definition to the bodice, sandwiching it between the centre front edge and the front facing. I was too lazy to pull out the overlocker so I did french seams all over the bodice. For the skirt I just removed the waist elastic, attached it to the new bodice and let down the hem a bit. The only fancy thing I did was to use the bias strips I cut from the original bodice to bind the bodice facings. Maybe a bit overkill for this dress but it does give a nice finish.

Finally, the buttons are from my stash. I found them after excavating my haberdashery drawers.

And the dress is done!

It felt like a hard slog to get it sorted, but a worthwhile exercise. When I started the remake of this dress I also started logging my outfits for fun. Since I finished it about 2 months ago I have worn it 6 times, making it the most worn dress in my wardrobe (yep, that’s how many clothes I have …) Let me leave you with a demonstration of my happiness that the remake is finally finished!

Have you ever pulled apart and remade anything you originally made? Do you ever feel guilty cutting up wearable clothes to refashion?