Polka Dot Skirt Refashion

Sometimes I start to go about a refashion, I get all in the groove, and then I have to step back and say "What. What are you doing.Why are you doing this."

This refashion, my friends, was one of those cases.

I got this skirt from the Goodwill for a dollar and although floor-length button up skirts scream high fashion, I thought it would be good to change it up.

The weird thing about this skirt though was that even though it had a buttoned waist, it also had an elastic waist band which was still entirely too big for my waist. So I decided to do the most back-asswards thing I could think of to fix this situation.

(Get psyched for some really bad pictures in terrible lighting aw yeah.)

I started off by unbuttoning the entire skirt so that it was completely open (that's attractive). I then used my pinking shears to separate the waist band from the skirt itself, leaving about an inch of seam allowance.

I then measured the waist band against my own waist, pinned off the extra room on each side, and then sewed the elastic down so that the entire thing felt comfortable.

With the remaining fabric, I compared it to my body and decided that I wanted it at more of a knee-length, rather than a floor length. So I cut a few inches off the top of the skirt (so that I wouldn't have to re-hem the bottom) and ran a gathering stitch along that top edge.

All I had left to do was reattach my waist piece to the body piece of the skirt, which I did by using the gathers to manipulate the body into being the same length as the waist.

And now I am a beautiful polka-dotted baby bird who still doesn't know how to pose for pictures. Fly away baby bird-- off to your destiny.

In retrospect, I supposed I could have just, you know... hemmed the skirt and took the waist in normally, but at the time, this method made more sense to me. I had to take the waist in a lot, and I was afraid that if I just sewed down the sides, the skirt would be too clingy. Hence the cutting off the waist and gathering the bottom. At least this way, the skirt stayed a little fuller. Ah well.

Has anyone one else had this sort of refashioning situation before? Where you literally have to be like "Woah.What."
Because I feel like that happens to me at least once during the course of every sewing project haha.


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