Recycling an Old Dress

I was asked to be in a wedding that took place last month. The bride was flexible and only had two requirements: dress must be dark purple and must be around knee length. She gave me a few examples of dress styles she liked, but left the choosing to her bridesmaids.

Let's take a step back in time, now... With my mom's help, I made my prom dresses in high school for both Junior and Senior proms. I held on to my Senior Prom dress as I loved the color. Eleven years went by before I had the occasion to wear it again (the wedding last month). But rather than wearing it again, I decided to take it apart and remake it for a bridesmaid dress. Sadly, I don't have a picture of the original dress, but imagine a strapless, A-line, floor-length gown. Not too hard, right?

After I salvaged as much of the fabric as I could, I pinned it on my foam dress mannequin, I love that thing. Below is a close-up of what I wanted the bodice to look like.

And below, here is the whole dress, knee-length at the the bride's request. Obviously, the dress would need to have two layers as this would be beyond scandalous, LOL!

Now, I can pin anything on my dress mannequin and make it look exactly like I want it do, but sewing without a pattern is still beyond my capabilities. So I went to the fabric store and looked at patterns. I could not find an exact match, but found a similar pattern. Here is the finished dress below (I hadn't finished hemming the arm holes at this point).

Sure, I had to buy thread, a new zipper, and fabric for the underside layer of the dress, and I had to invest some time. But in the end, I saved a large sum of money and I got a tailor-made, original dress in the end.