Hello all!

Todays one is a fun one. When Portia announced that #refashioners2020 was all about using what you have, I had a good rummage in my ‘to refashion’ box and dug out the remains of my Summer Ball Dress, sewn in 2016. (Click here to read the rather entertaining blog post I wrote about it at the time). To make things a little harder, a few years ago I decided to cut up said Summer Ball Dress and make it into something inspired by this dress. Unfortunately my version turned out rather buttock skimming and so was deemed innapropriate to wear around the house in. Then last summer I wanted to make some light silky shorts to wear to the beach, so I took my tent dress and cut some shorts out of it. So, what was I working with at this point? A pair of green shorts, the 2 triangles I used as the bodice pieces for my ball dress and the remnants of the tent dress.

This was the action plan: Use the shorts as they were. Draft a bodice pattern with gathered underbust bits and a shaped midriff panel for the front, and just 2 narrow side back pieces attached to a shirred back panel attached to the shorts. I actually ended up designing it to be backless because I didn’t have a zip, but I did have some shirring elastic!

This ended up being what I’d call a ‘dirty’ make. It wasn’t about nicely finished insides, it was about being creative and making an idea a reality. (Think the refashioning round of the sewing bee). As a result, the insides are horrendous but I had a lot of fun troubleshooting as I went along putting it together. I managed to get my bodice front pieces out of the triangles as I’d hoped. The sleeves I had to piece several times, but I didn’t mind because it’s all in the spirit of refashioning.

Sewing it all together went fairly smoothly. I played around with the bodice gathers a bit, and if I were to make this again I’d look at leaving the CF a bit clearer and focusing the gathers more under each breast.

I’m having a bit of a moment with backless things at the minute and so I’m completely in love with the deep rectangular cut out. It sat absolutely fine before I sewed the sleeves in but unfortunately the weight of the sleeves pull the shoulders down, hence the annoying but really very necessary back ties. You can see some of the sleeve piecing if you look very hard at the photo below.

It was so nice that the shorts were already hemmed so all the handfinishing that I had to do was to slipstitch the neckline binding down!

I’ve not really got much more about this make to say really. I had a lot of fun putting it together, and it’s so comfy and breezy to wear in this heat!

Thank you for reading!

Lauren xx