49-Cent Friday: Dress Pants Refashion

I can’t believe it’s been a whole week since I last posted.

I’ve been playing catch up. We went away for Easter weekend and I’ve been trying to get the house in order this week (in case you were wondering why I was MIA).

But now I’m back and ready to share this week’s refashion with ya’. 🙂

I started with this pair of GAP dress pants.

hmmm???

As you can see the legs are too long and baggy.

I wasn’t quite sure exactly how I wanted to refashion these, but I had gotten some inspiration from Pinterest earlier this week when I saw a pin for a cute top refashioned from a pair of dress pants via Of Dreams and Seams.

To start, I grabbed my seam ripper and picked away at the crotch seam and the insides of the legs.

Pick pick pick.

Once the seams were opened up, I tried the pants on my dress form backwards.

Hmm, I’m getting some ideas now.

I decided to use the pockets for the armholes since they lined up in the right place, so I started picking away at the pocket seams, once again using my seam ripper.

pick pick pick

Now that my arms had a place to go, I started pinning the front and back panels together…

Front

Back

Now I needed to sew that puppy up!

whirrr

Since the cuffs of the pant legs were already finished, I didn’t have to hem the bottom. 🙂

I did, however, have to finish my new armholes, so I folded them over and decided to hand stitch both sides to hide the stitching. This took a lot longer than if I had simply run them through the sewing machine. In retrospect, it probably wouldn’t have looked any worse to have done it that way and it definitely would’ve saved me some time, but, oh well!

New arm holes! 🙂

Once I finished all of the hand stitching, all I had to do was try it on!

Holla!

This was very hard to pull on, (and waaaaaayyy too tight in the bust. Luckily I hadn’t cut off the excess material!) but once I got it on and situated, I really liked the look of it.
I knew this dress wasn’t very practical though, simply because it was so hard to get on and off (and so stinkin’ tight in the chest).
Notice in the picture how it looks like a two-piece? I didn’t like how long the length was, so I grabbed the material at my waist, and pulled up until the length was right above my knees, then I folded it over, added a belt, and that’s why it looks like a top with a skirt.

I decided to make it more wearable, I’d just go ahead and separate the top from the skirt.

Chop!

I also desperately needed to make some more room in the bust, so I let out part of the front seam. (Forgot to take pics’, sorry.)

Then pinned and hemmed my new top…

Easy peasy

To finish the skirt, I grabbed a big elastic waistband, and measured it around my waist, cut to the right size, and then attached it to the waist of the skirt…

like so

When I tried it on this time, it was much MUCH easier to put on. (And I could breathe a lot easier too!)

aah 😉

What do you think?

I love the uniqueness of this outfit.

Oops! My fly’s open!

I’m glad I decided to make it a two-piece! Not only is it much easier to put on and take off now, I can also wear each piece separately! 🙂

Oh and what did you think about the belt loops? I love being able to weave a scarf through there (or a necklace even)! 🙂

Have a great weekend ya’all!
~Jen

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