Dress Refashion Idea: From One Dress to Two Tops

I absolutely love thrifting for fun treasures. On a recent trip I saw this dress and couldn’t say no. I loved everything about it except for the length. Not being able to say no to this cute floral fabric, I took it home where I could use this easy dress refashion idea. In a couple quick steps I was able to turn this cute, too short dress, into two tops! One for me, and a coordinating look for my daughter. This is an easy and quick refashion that you could use for many different dresses. Read on below to see how you can create your own.

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Dress Refashion

For this quick and easy refashion I simply turned my dress into two peplum tops. Let’s start by taking a look at my top as it was the easiest one. I loved the bodice of this dress and it fit perfectly. Therefore the only thing I needed to do was shorten the dress to a peplum length. To do this I grabbed one of my favorite retail wear peplum tops, pictured below.

I measured how long that peplum portion is, added an inch to the amount for the hem and simply cut off the dress at this new length. Now, I should have been able to move on quickly and hem my new top but I went scissor happy and cut a hole in my fabric….yikes! Just in case you ever find yourself in this situation, here is what I did to fix it:

Used wonder under to attach a piece of matching fabric to the back of the cut. Fused the fabric onto the shirt and then hand stitched the tear until I felt it was completely secure and invisible. I feel like you can’t see it…or at least I hope you can’t!

To round out this outfit I paired the peplum with these super fun, lightweight earrings from Amazon, jeggings from Amazon and a hacked Blazer I created for one of my favorite patterns from Made for Mermaids. You can see that post later this week. I love when even the lipstick coordinates and this long lasting one is my new favorite. I wore this outfit to a meeting and the woman and I was talking with zoned out a bit during our talk and said “I got distracted by all your pretty pinks, I was just looking at them all and admiring them.” I actually received several compliments this day, so take note- rock the hot pink people! It seems to be a crowd pleaser 🙂

To create a coordinating top for my daughter I only had a small bit of fabric to work with. The remaining portion of the hem was about 7 inches long. I took this fabric and cut short sleeves out using the Patterns for Pirates Boundless Pattern. You can see a full review of the Boundless Pattern here.

I cut the bodice out of a solid black rayon spandex I had in my stash and then took the remaining piece of dress hem from the original and created a peplum for her. After sewing the short ends together to create one long tube, I pinned in pleats in both the front and back to somewhat mimic the pleats on my peplum. If I would have had a wider piece of fabric to work with, the pleats could have been much deeper and have the same number around the peplum as mine…but when you refashion you need to work with what you have. Instead I just made sure I had the pleats equal on both sides and deep enough to narrow the peplum to the same width as the bodice. I kept the original hem from the dress, so once I sewed the bodice of the Boundless Pattern, I simply attached the peplum and I was done.

This quick little refashion provided me with the beautiful fabric I loved from this thrift store dress and a coordinating piece for my daughter to wear. We will be enjoying these tops this spring and summer and I will be keeping my eye out for more fun thrift store treasures to repurpose.

If you enjoyed this mommy and me look you may also enjoy these posts:

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Until next time,

Happy Sewing