Pretty In Pink

My favorite color is pink. It doesn't matter what shade. I love them all. I can't get enough pink. I also love the movie Pretty In Pink. There's a scene in that movie when Molly Ringwold takes 2 fancy dresses and turns them into 1 beautiful PINK prom dress. That has always been one of my favorite scenes from that movie since I first saw it (only second to the last scene when she runs out to the parking lot to find Blain and they kiss.)  Maybe that's why I love dress refashioning so much.   

So when I went to Goodwill last Saturday, and found a dress in a super pretty shade of pink and it was only $1, I couldn't pass it up. It had an awesome detail on the bodice, too.  It was a big dress. Although the tag said medium, I would have guessed at least an XL just by looking at it, but maybe it was just supposed to be billowy.

My original plan when I saw this dress was to lose the sleeves, shoulder pads, collar, length and pockets. (It amazes me how many dresses come with pockets. As I've said before, I think they are pointless. Does anyone really put anything other than maybe tissues in those pockets???)

Once I got to work on this dress, everything seemed to go smoothly at first. All the unnecessary parts were coming off the dress easily. Then I tried the dress on to see how the "rough draft" looked.   I wasn't impressed. =( 

The armholes were HUGE. And as it turned out, the bodice fit me just right, so there wasn't extra fabric to take in on the sides so I could make the armholes smaller the easy way.  Instead, I had to get the seam ripper out and undo the shoulder seams. This way, I could bring the dress "up" and therefore the armholes wouldn't be as big. 
But wait....When I did this, the top button was choking me because in the process, that came up, too. So I got creative. I decided on a different neckline. I folded the neckline under to the 3rd button. And that worked great! 

So I tried the dress on again. The armholes were fixed, the neckline looked great, but there were still problems. Ugh! 
The top of the armholes stuck out further than my shoulders and the dress still seemed to loose at the bottom. It looked like a bad maternity dress from the 80's. (ewww).  Since the bottom of the dress was gathered, I had the big idea that if I undo all the seams and take out the gathered portion, I could stretch it out a bit, cut it to where I needed and sew it back together.  I spent a long time ripping out seams and only when I was done did I realize this wouldn't work. It wouldn't work, because it wouldn't change the shape of the bodice. (Normally, I would put darts in to make a dress more fitted, but because of the design on the bodice coupled with the fact the bodice already fit, I couldn't do that for this dress.)
I sewed the seams back up and had to think...
I had a bunch of extra fabric from shortening this dress.

I came to the decision of making a sash and sewing it to the front of the dress. Then I could tie it in the back and make it as tight as I needed. That worked out perfectly (in my opinion).  And bonus: attaching the sash actually covered up a tiny blue marker stain (see picture) on the dress. =)

As for the top of the armholes, I just kept turning the armhole seams under until they were where I needed them to be and I sewed them in place. 

I think the dress turned out nicely. I feel very feminine in it. And it feels like a party dress. 

I hope all of this made sense. lol I think my brain is still tired from trying to figure out this dress refashion. =)

***If you have some time, swing by my zibbet shop and take a look around!***

http://www.zibbet.com/TheRufflyBuffalo

Thanks! =D