Put A Little Pep In Your Shirt

While thinking about which refashion to do next, I realized I've done mostly dresses. And while I really like dresses, I don't get to go many places to wear them.  So, for this project, I decided to transform a $1 Goodwill dress into a Peplum top. I've seen peplum tops everywhere lately.  Anthropology has them for around $58 each. (yikes!) 
But first, I decided to go to Goodwill and find a pair of red capri pants that would go with my future peplum top.  I lucked out and found a pair of red capri pants in my size.

                                The dress I used was 3 sizes too big for me. 

So the first thing I did was to try on the dress inside out.  I looked in the mirror and pinched the sides of the dress until it "fit" and measured how much fabric I needed to trim off the sides.  Then I laid the dress in the floor and pinned up the sides and sewed. I trimmed the excess fabric off and used a zig zag stitch on the raw edges. 

I tried the dress on again (right side out) and measured how far down I wanted the finished top to be.  I laid the dress on the floor again and cut to the desired shirt length.

I put the excess fabric aside because I would use it as the peplum part of the shirt.
Then I tried the shirt on AGAIN.  At this point, I measured from the neckline to 1" above my belly button. (This measurement for me was 13") This is where I wanted the seam for my peplum.  I took off the shirt and cut where I measured 1" above my belly button. 

Then I did some math. I knew what length I wanted the finished shirt to be and I knew how long the shirt was at this point, so I had to figure out how long the peplum needed to be.  For me it was 8". 

Next, I cut the excess fabric to 8" long for the peplum.  Then I put it in my sewing machine to put in a gathering stitch to make it "ruffle-y".

  I turned the shirt inside out and the peplum fabric inside out.  I matched up the seams and pinned the peplum to the top. I tried it on again just to make sure I didn't mess up the seam like I did with this dress .  Liking what I saw, I sewed them together. It worked! YAY! =)  I trimmed the excess fabric from the seam (to cut down on the extra bulk) and used a zig zag seam to clean up the look on the inside.

However, the top still needed something else to make it more fitted.  So I decided to add two darts to the front.

(I'm glad I used tan thread. If I had used black, it would have been impossible to see the stitches.)

 I tried it on for a final time and was super happy to see that it turned out exactly as I wanted.

Don't ya just love when you do something right?

The total cost of my outfit was $4.76. ($1.06 for the dress I used to make the top and $3.70 for the capris).

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

http://www.zibbet.com/TheRufflyBuffalo

Thanks! =D