Inspirations & Alterations: A Friend with Great Style

I have a friend who has great style - she just has an eye for what works and what doesn't. She came to me a few weeks ago with a bag of things to alter and an idea for a dress she wanted me to make for a wedding she was attending in New Orleans. One of the items she wanted altered was a long linen skirt her mother's sister brought back from Egypt many years ago. Her thought was just to yank it up and turn it into a tube dress with some elastic -- Easy, she told me and my thought was, "um, maybe?"

Over the next few weeks we tossed dress ideas back and forth -- emailed pictures, talked budget but couldn't land on the same page. She decided to wear something she already had and we went to work on transforming her linen skirt.

Linen floor length skirt

Detail of lace bottom and sides - the sides were open with lace
overlay from bottom edge to waist

She wanted something simple - a rounded neckline, sleeveless, short with a deep v in the back. The first step was to make a muslin pattern - a must because I had one shot to make the dress so I wanted to make all my mistakes and adjustments on the muslin before I made any cuts to the linen skirt

The pattern I had was for a tank top so I needed to cut my muslin

longer for the dress.

Playing with the back of the muslin pattern,
the "v" I cut was not deep enough so I made
adjustments and marked my tissue pattern in red.

As you can see, we made a few adjustments to the back.
The lowest line is what we decided to go with.

With the muslin pattern adjusted, I started taking the
skirt apart - first removing the lace along both sides
and then the original stitches.

Next I needed to find the center lines, front
and back - making sure the beaded design
was centered between both edges.

As you can see, the pattern was wider than the skirt.
My solution was to find fabric that was a close match to
make the original skirt wider so the pattern would fit.

Not a perfect match, but I liked it and I knew I could
camouflage the line with the lace trim I was putting back on.

In addition to adding a side piece to both the front and back,

I also added a piece to the bottom to give a few more

inches in length.

The zipper was my next challenge. I couldn't sew a seam
up the center back because of the beading. I found my center
line and folded the fabric, marked a 7 inch line and sewed a
basting stitch 5/8" from the fold line. Next I cut down the fold
and and sewed in my zipper, one side at a time just
as I would any other invisible zipper.

Placing the original lace back on the new dress.
I was trying to get the spacing similar to what
was on the lower edge of the original skirt.
I don't know if you can notice where the new piece
of fabric was added to give some length to the bottom
edge. As I hoped, the lace did a great job
camouflaging the additional fabric.