Dresses For December Part 5, The Shirt Dress

Hello Readers. It is freezing cold out there and I am still working on dresses. I am wearing tights and lots of layers to stay warm while I am wearing these dresses in honor of Dressember. You can go to Dressember.org and learn more about their work to fight human trafficking. They are raising money all this month and it starts with wearing dresses. Or bow-ties.

My dress today started as a 2XL men's dress shirt. It was really big on me and just long enough (I hoped!) to make a little black shirt dress.

 

 

Here is my beginning. This shirt was in great shape and I love black. But as you can see it is way too big and those arms are ridiculous on me. This was a great shirt to work with though, so I was happy.

 

The first thing I did was remove the cuffs from the sleeves. I used my seam ripper to pick out the stitches. I took them off the sleeves and left them to the side for later. I had a plan for them so I wanted them intact and in their original size.

 

You can see here what I cut off the shirt. I removed about half of the sleeve length and then reattached the cuffs. They will end just past my elbows. The cuffs make the sleeves look neat and nicely finished. I also took the sides of the whole shirt in to make it more narrow. It is pretty straight and boxy in shape. That's OK, This isn't a fitted style dress. I wanted a loose fit.

 

 

I planned to belt this little dress when I wore it. My dress form is wearing it here. It's so cold even she needed a scarf.

 

I wore this out and about running errands and when I added some extra layers I was able to stay warm but it was not easy. Yikes, it was frigid and windy.

 

 

 

***   BONUS PROJECT   ***

How did I stay warm? Fleece-lined tights. they look like basic opaque tights but inside is warm soft fleece. They are so cozy and warm. They are like sweatpants. I bought these without realizing they were footless and open at the bottom.

 

 

Here is the thing. They were so long on me that when I pulled them ALL the way up they were still hanging down on my feet. I didn't like the fabric all bunched up around my ankles like this. And I would like my feet covered and warm too.

 

 

I turned them inside-out and started stitching a rounded shape at the bottom of each leg. I was going to close them up and pretend they were meant to cover my feet.

 

Here is what it looked like when I was done. I cut off the corners so it would fit around my feet and I wouldn't have a bunch of extra fabric bunched up in my shoe.

 

I turned them right-side out and tried them on. It worked! They are closed and warm and now they do what I needed them to do, keep me warm.

 

Thanks for reading, I hope you stay warm where ever you are today.