Recycling my wedding dress

As often happens, we change body shape and the clothes that used to fit us don't anymore. This was the case with my wedding dress.

 I was never precious about the dress. It cost me a whole $145.00 on sale. But it was what I wanted to wear. I had bought a dress originally off eBay, where you send your measurements  to China and they send you a dress back. I thought "Ok, this will do" until about 2 months before the wedding... Mum took me shopping then and we found the dress above. It was strapless, so we took the beaded straps off the first dress and put them on this one.

I have had the dress in mind for a while for another project, to use the boofy underskirt as the base of a cosplay dress because purchasing and layering that much tulle is far too painful. Better to re-use what I have as well, to give it more life.
Cosplay aside, I am also singing in a choir show where I am required to wear a wedding dress for one of the numbers (ABBA - I do I do I do I do I do). So this was a great opportunity to refashion my dress.

I did try it on as-is, and had a couple of problems:

• the straps are too short now
• my bust doesn't fit in the top
• as a result of the above, the zip won't fasten.

The answer: separate the two.

So that's what I did. I got a pair of scissors and snipped out the fabric that connected the skirt to the top, connecting under the bust. The top actually sat further down, so it's long enough to wear as a cropped top on its own.

I didn't want a veil when I got married, so my very talented mother had put a puff of tulle around my shoulders instead. I loved it! I made my own necklace, and a beaded hair piece to go with the giant white flower I had found. The only thing I really splashed out on were my earrings - Swarovski!

Back to refashioning.
This is the skirt on its own:

The zip came out quite easily and I was able to insert a new one without too much trouble. However I only had long zips in my stash, so I had to cut one off (it was recycled anyway).

The trick with cut off zips is to sew a stopped at the end, as below, so that it won't pull off.

I pinned the zip in, only catching the bottom layer of the skirt with the pins.The tulle layer actually disguises the zip, so I let it float over. Because I wasn't sewing both, it made it hard to manoeuvre  in the sewing machine. I ended up hand-sewing the zip in.

I used a piece of satin that I had and made a long double-sided strip to use as a waist band.

It tied at the back, further disguising the zip.

And there we are - a separate, white tulle skirt that I can wear with anything.

On to the top.
I removed the tulle and put it in my stash for a future project. I picked the zip out of the back of the top as well, because it was too small I needed to add extra fabric in.

As the straps were too tight now, I also unpicked the back of them so that I could add more length. The beads may not work now that it's no longer a wedding dress, but we shall see. I can always put plain straps on instead.

I lengthened the straps with some more satin and pinned them to try it on. It still looks a lot like a wedding dress top. Since I need a wedding dress for the show I'm singing in, I'll leave them for now. I will just hand sew them on though, which will make them easier to remove and replace later.

I had bought a cheap wedding dress for another project that came with a white satin wrap - perfect fabric to match my wedding top.

For the back I cut two lengths and overlocked the edges, and then sewed the zip in the middle. It would be easier to put the zip in and then attach the fabric to the top.

I shaped the piece to an upside-down v-shape at the bottom, as the zip was longer than I had thought and I didn't want to cut it off. But I also thought that it would look nice. This spot, in the middle of the back, is often where shirts ride up when we sit down as well: the extra length of fabric would prevent this.

But once I had sewn it and tried it on, it looked odd. So I tucked the little tail under and hand sewed it down.

And here is the refashioned dress!