Men’s Shirt Refashon 1: Summertime Dress (Part One – The Dress)

raw materials #2

the inspiration

I was digging through a bag of clothes my mom wanted to take out to donate a couple of months ago and came across a silk dress shirt of an unflattering size and style for me.  The fabric was so gorgeous I shoved it straight into my “do something with later” pile and started Googling for ideas.  

I came across this super cute refashioning that I instantly wanted to try.  (Visit her etsy shop here.) I couldn’t just try it straightaway on the silk shirt, so I had to stop off at Goodwill and pick up a few men’s shirts to practice on.  The idea had been to just make a simple, practice neckline.  From there it turned into a dress, with a photo shoot, and a matching parasol.  Well…I guess I don’t do simple very well!

I started with an XL men’s dress shirt and combined it with this dress I never wear.  It’s super cute, but the material is thin.  A slip might have solved the problem, but I cut it up so that also solved that problem.  It took me a few weeks to make this since I had to figure out what I was going to do as I went along.  I didn’t really have a plan aside from working on that neckline, so there was a lot of cutting apart of what I had sewn to rework it. 

I don’t feel comfortable offering a tutorial on how I did end up putting together the top as the original idea belongs to someone else who sells it.  However, I will say that it wasn’t too bad to reverse engineer it for anyone else who thought that it was a great way to re-imagine a shirt! 

Here’s what I ended up with, front and back view.  The checked pattern of the cloth really suggested an innocent sundress, it’s very Dorothy inspired as well.  I later on added on the yellow underlayer because just the shirt alone as a dress still looked like…I’m wearing a men’s shirt and nothing else.  I ended up shirring (and here is a great tutorial on how to do that!) a large section of the back as a cheater method of making it fit.  I’d sewn darts along the back but I suck at making it super tailored.  The shirring ended up being so cute as a panel (and it REALLY did the trick on making it more form-fitting) that I will have to make another dress with it on purpose. 

I can't wait for the weather to be actually WARM so I can wear this dress.  Stay tuned for taking the dress out of this yucky looking field and into a pretty one for the photo shoot segment!