Up-Cycling - Christmas Program Dresses

( what was left of the silk blouse...the rest were snipples is that a word?)

Hope was telling me that she NEEDS a new dress for the Christmas program...on Friday. After  all they are supposed to wear DARK dresses and the ONLY dresses that no one had seen were LIGHT-colored dresses.
I have much sewing-for-$$$ that needs to be done.  When my girls have clothes that are not stained, have no holes, and are still long enough I will push off the fun sewing in order to complete my quilt orders.  BUT I felt guilty after delivering the quilts on Monday so I decided to check G**dwill to see what I could find.
There just are not many decent dresses for pre-teen girls.  I decided to check out the skirts, thinking I'd just make a bodice to put on a 'nice' skirt...

So I came home with 3 tops and 2 skirts.  Two of the tops said "professional dry clean only"  so I threw everything in the washer on cold water wash. They all came out OK.   The one top was kept to wear another day because it was too small to cut the bodice of a dress.(If your original blouse has buttons down the front make sure it is XL if you aren't planning to re-use the button front)

directions and lessons learned:
Wash the 'fabric' to make sure you don't end up with a dry clean only dress.  (the bodice of Hope's dress is silk)

Make sure the blouses you buy are big enough to cut your desired pattern.

The velvet top had no openings, just a very loose neckline (more fabric)  so I cut the front of Faith's dress from the front of the blouse and the back from the back...cut off the sleeves with a scissors...no careful seam opening this time.   Left the sleeve hems and seams alone and  just shaped the top of the sleeve using her dress pattern.  Had enough of left over fabric to make interfacing.
Her skirt basically went straight to the dress with only 4 pleats added at the waistline. I cut off the original waist/elastic stuff so the seam would lay nicer, but kept the hem intact.  I could add a belt, but she does not like belts and would rather have a loose dress.

Hope's silk bodice did incorporate some of the side seams of the original blouse, but I didn't think it was a problem. I would have liked to use some of the decoration that was at the neckline,but it looked worn and there was a stain (note for next time-check closer).  The sleeves originally were a square cut pattern (at the top), so I just reshaped the top and again left the seam and bottom hems alone...they could have decoration.

I did line Hope's bodice with some cotton fabric to give stability and modesty ^^   The belt is from some leftover silky fabric that was laying around here. The flower was given to her by a classmate.
  The skirt was wide with pleats  so I reshaped it with her pattern...lost the pockets in the process and discarded the belted/elastic waistline, but was able to keep the hem...

Two 'fancy' dresses in one busy day....the beauty of this is that you don't have to "like" my color combos or their or my pattern...you can go out to those RACKS of ladies clothes and pick from ALL SORTS of fabrics and make your dress...just think what you can do with those HUGE dresses you can find.