Peplum Party!

I'm BAAAACCCKKKK! lol

Hope this finds you well :-)

I'll just jump in.

I got the linen dress below from my mother.

It was another one of the gems she passed down from when she was my age.

I don't like the way it fits anymore.

AND it's a maxi dress but it's highwater lol (can that be possible?)

So, I decided to change it into a Peplum Shirt!

I got the idea from my little cousin who sent me THIS video on YouTube.

Most of what I'm showing in this post is directly from the video so I'm not going to explain EVERYTHING.

I had to make minor changes, though, because of some of the dresses features.

Anyway, I started by measuring my waist wear the top and bottom of the peplum would meet.

Following the directions from the video, and a circle skirt chart, I made my pattern for the bottom of the peplum top

I made it 7 inches long

My ghetto tissue paper because the one I had wasn't big enough lol

Cutting out the pattern

I pinned the pattern to the bottom part of the dress that I wasn't planning on using for the body of the shirt

Cutting the pattern out of the dress

The result of the pattern

I pinned the two sides together so that I could do a better job of cutting them evenly around the curve.  The linen on this dress was a bit stretchy so it kept moving when I tried to cut it.

Sewing the top two edges of the circle skirt together (insides facing out)

Both sides of the circle skirt sewn together

I then cut the body of the top off of the rest of the dress. I had to be careful because there is a zipper on it. I made sure to cut an inch or two below the zipper to leave room for seam allowance.

Crooked, i know lol It gets fixed later. Anyway, I flipped the top inside out

I wanted to take it in on the sides but I didn't like the way that it looked.

Plus I had to think about the zipper

So I decided to gather the back instead.

Pinned down

Evening out the cut at the bottom of the top

Making a line to sew on the back of the top

I also pinned either side of the line I was going to sew on to ensure that the fabric did not move as I was sewing.

New Back

Next it was time to attach the circle skirt to the top

Pinning down the circle skirt to sew it on.

This was what i ended up with. 

I wasn't completely satisfied yet. It was wearable but I knew I could do a little better.

I went home and added Fray Check to the bottom of the circle skirt to stop the fraying of the linen

A couple of days later, I removed the circle skirt from the top.
I RE-cut the bottom of the top to make sure that it was straight.
I also took more in on the back of it to make the top a little more fitted.

I re-attached the circle skirt.
Carefully, this time measuring the seam allowance all the way around to ensure that the length of the skirt would be even all the way around the top.
I also cut off the dried frayed pieces from the Fray Check

VOILA!

I can afford to cut off more of the frayed parts

Window checkin'

What do you think?!

Let me know in the comments!

See you in the next post!
Share and stuff!

xoxo, Tasha