80's Dress to Hi-Lo Skirt Refashion

Greetings good people :]

I know that I've been pretty absent lately, and that makes me mega-sad, but hopefully I can do something about that! A lot has happened for me personally over the past... however long it's been, including moving away from all my people, getting my first big-kid post-grad job, and other various hiccups that come along with living in the real world.

But I have been at least somewhat creative in the meantime!

For example, I have done a few refashions, as well as worked on a few art pieces, which I hope to share some time soonly. In the mean time, here's a thing that I did manage to work up:

Gosh, I do love me some ridiculous 80's patterns [as well as giant 80's hair, which I decided to rock today]. They're just so ridiculously fab, how could you not love... whatever that is?

This refashion was not what I initially intended it to be. Originally, I thought that I was just going to keep it a dress because I loved that great gold button at the collar, but, well.. you'll see.

I started off by taking out the shoulder pads because while the linebacker look is great, it's just not my deal.

Then I started cutting off one of the arms of the dress following the curve of the weird shoulder-region.

When I got to the other sleeve though, I ran into a major snag. I got a little zesty with the scissors and cut the curve way too far, practically all the way to where the buttons are. Oops. Wild woman over here. So I decided to go a different route because yay problem-solving.

I decided that this dress actually wanted to be a skirt the entire time, so I gave into its wishes and cut the whole bottom of the dress off.

I then folded it my raw edge over once very small-like and sewed that down. I then folded it over again to create a casing for some elastic to be threaded through. I left a small section open though so that I could put the elastic in.

I measured a piece of 1" elastic around my waist so that it was comfortable, then added about an extra inch to that measurement so that I'd have a seam allowance.

I threaded the elastic through the hole in the casing, then sewed the two ends of the elastic together...

...and then I closed the hole in the casing.

All I had left to do was give my skirt a subtle hi-lo hemline by folding the skirt in half and cutting the hem on a slight curved angle. Then I hemmed up my raw edge and BOOM. Done.

Although this refashion wasn't what I expected or intended, I quite like the result! The hi-lo effect is not over the top, so I kind of like the subtlety of it all. I guess this refashion was just one of those happy accidents :]

So, any other accidental refashions out there?
I'll be linkin' mine up, for sure
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