Refashion Runway Season Four: All Stars – Week One: Velvet Challenge

I was so excited when I found out Beth (The Renegade Seamstress) was hosting another season of Refashion Runway, and ecstatic when she asked me to participate as a competitor. I mean, how could I say no?

Velvet is this week’s theme and I found two velvet garments to work with.

As you can see neither one was really doing anything for me – they’re not very flattering to say the least!

I started out by cutting off the top of the gigantic velvet dress.

At first I was thinking about having a maxi length dress, but then decided to go with a shorter length, and so I cut off a large portion of the bottom.

I pinned it to a piece of elastic I had taken off in a previous refashion, and then sewed it together.

Next I decided to focus on the shirt. I wanted to add a Peter Pan collar using some of the scrap material I cut off the dress.

I started by marking the center front of the shirt’s neckline.

Then I traced from the shoulder seam to the center (pinned) part.

After I had the neckline traced, I had to draw the rest of the collar shape freehand.

I then traced 1/4″ around for the seam allowance.

Now that I had my pattern all drawn, I needed to cut it out and find the material to use for my collar.

I decided to use scraps from the top of the black dress I cut off, some scraps of black and white polkadot cotton material (for the back of the collar), and I cut out some interfacing because I wanted to make it nice and stiff.

I repeated this with the pattern, and then flipped it to get the other side.

Once the pieces were all cut out I placed the front and back pieces, right-sides-together, with the interfacing on the bottom.

Then I sewed along the pinned edges, leaving the neckline part un-sewn.

I then turned the collar pieces right side out, and used a ruler to push the creases out.

The next thing to do was pin the collar pieces (right-sides-together) to the front neckline of the shirt and then sew it all up.

After sewing the collar pieces to the neckline, using my sewing machine, I wanted to make sure the collar would stay put, so I hand stitched the bottom part down (or tacked it if you will).

Once finished with the collar, I cut the shirt at the waistline.

Gave it a quick hem…

…and pinned it to the elastic waistband of the skirt.

After sewing the waistband onto the shirt, the only thing left to do was shorten the sleeves.

Chop chop.

Lastly I hemmed the sleeves.

All done!

I didn’t realize my face looked so ornery in the above picture. Must be the fact that it was over 90-degrees outside and I was wearing a velvet dress with leggings.  Ha!

This was a fun project, and I’m sure I’ll get a lot of wear from this dress (at least once the temperatures cool down).

I hope you liked this refashion and please don’t forget to head over to the Refashion Runway Competition and vote for your favorite!

I’m really looking forward to next week’s challenge. It’s the theme I am most excited about!

Take care!

~Jen