Repurposing Dress to Skirt

The other day I was browsing through Walmart when I saw these dresses on sale for $2.00!

Well, I wasn't the biggest fan of the actual dress (it wasn't bad, but I wanted something different) so I changed it into a skirt! Here's how:

First cut off the bottom of the skirt as close to the seam as possible.

Then measure how wide little ones waist is for the elastic. Then sew a zig zag stitch back and forth a few times to really hold it in place.

Now your going to find the "four corners" of your elastic and skirt. Using the zig zag stitch as one corner, place a pin directly opposite of it. Then put the pin and the stitches together to find the other two corners and mark with pins. The two side seams of the skirt are your first two corners. Place them together to mark your other two corners. Now we are going to find the middle point between corners. Place corner pins together and mark the middle point. Do this to all of them. So you should have eight pins (unless you left out your pin because of the stiches or the hems) Like this: 

Do the same for the skirt.

Now fold your material over about 3/8" from the top and re-pin.

Then match the pins on the elastic with the pins on your skirt...

And your ready to sew!

Sew 1/4" seam allowance from top. PLEASE remember to pull your elastic to stretch the length of your fabric between each pin. And PLEASE remember to pull from behind and in front. TRUST me. Needles don't like the tension of that elastic being pulled one way and tend to break. (And if your not careful they will pop you in the eye! Yep. Lucky me no real injury.)

Then sew a 1/4" from the bottom of the elastic. And if your lines aren't straight, it's okay. They really won't show too much when all the fabric is gathered. Try to get them as straight as possible, but I know it's hard when your pulling and such. (See mine aren't straight)

And there you have a skirt!

But I wanted to show you one more idea first. My one year old is tiny. So the skirt would have been really bulky around her waist. So I just sewed in about 3/4" from each side seam to shrink the width of it. I did this right after I cut the dress apart.

Now I have two matching skirts. Perfect for valentines day!