"That's SO 70s" Refashion

Back in November, I found some dresses at the thrift store that I wanted to refashion. I kept putting it off and putting it off, but I finally got around to refashioning my "homeschool mom" dress here. For that dress, all I really had to do was trim the bottom and hem it. But, on that same thrifting journey, I found another dress. It was a dress that would need quite a bit of work. It was a refashion more at the level of  New Dress a Day. 

It kind of reminds me of dresses that I've seen my Mom wear in old pictures from her high school and college days. The amount of ruffles on this dress was crazy. I felt like I was stuck in a bad movie. Over the past month, I've worked bit by bit on this dress. I could only handle a little at a time. First, I removed the big ruffle collar from around the neck using a seam ripper. Then I cut some of the length off to make it a little shorter. About this time, I got frustrated and threw it across the room. It still wasn't looking right. I really was thinking that there was no hope for this dress. It was a little tight fitting, so not much room or material to work with. I didn't even take pictures, because I thought that there was no way for this to work out.

I thought that the flutter sleeves might look cute, but the dress was still too reminiscent of something I would have worn when I was five. 

Insert cute picture from when I was five-ish.

We moved up a few decades, but not enough. Cutting the flutter sleeves off really didn't help the thing, so once again it was thrown across the room and put up for a few days. Once again, no pictures of these steps because I was frustrated.

Then, I got the bright idea to cut the straps off (that's all that was left of the sleeves at this point). Which was a great idea, except for the fact that there was no way I could wear this dress strapless (it was cut the wrong way, and not made for that). I didn't want to mess with the zipper, so I got the idea to use the ribbon that had been used as a belt to make it into a "pillowcase-type" dress. I adjusted the zipper to make it start further down, folded the material over, and made a tunnel for the ribbon to go through. Finally, it started to look like something I could work with.

Pardon the iPhoneography. Not the best lighting.

I haven't hemmed the bottom yet, but I think it's good. It's a little dressier than I normally wear, but it could be cute for the right occasion. I mean, it has a BOW! Plus, it just makes me smile when I think about how it started out looking so silly!