Changing It Up

I made this denim shirtdress in June 2018 during my shirtdress making season.

I wore it a couple of times.  Every time though I felt like a jailhouse matron. When I pulled it out in the spring it just sat with all of the bad feelings attached to it. I thought it would make a great vest. Not something I would wear during the spring/summer months, so I left it to make the alterations in the fall. Then my sewjo went on vacation and the dress sat. 

I'm missing my sewjo. It's my friend and keeps me company...engages me creatively...takes amazing adventures with me...so I want it back.  In an effort to coax it to return, I thought I would do some simple creative tasks. Clean off my cutting table, trace a pattern out that I want to sew and alter this dress.

Alterations to the dress ~

Of course I removed the sleeves first.

Next I cut 7.5" off the bottom of the dress because I wanted a cardigan length vest not a maxi one. As pictured below, I chose to cut it off right before the last buttonhole. It would allow me to have enough space to hem the vest without having to remove a buttonhole.

The hem was topstitched with a 6.0mm twin universal needle using a 4.5" stitch length. This was done to match the existing twinstitching on the garment.

When I was reworking this, I realized that the accents for this dress/vest were made from some of the same blue gingham fabric I used for this shirt (which is one of my faves). So naturally I paired them together for a photograph.  This is how I will wear the vest and shirt over a pair of jeans or leggings.

I won't be taking "modelled" pictures of this alteration.  Just wanted to share how I updated the dress and made it wearable. I'm happy I shortened it into a vest. It will definitely get more wear this way.  Don't know if this actually made my sewjo come home but Imma keep plugging away at smaller sewing tasks so it knows its missed. Though this little bit of sewing felt good and I'm hoping my sewjo will come home soon! 

...as always more later!