(P)Leather Dress for Dressember

 Hello Readers. It is Dressember. I am wearing and refashioning dresses all month to help raise awareness about human trafficking and forced labor. Dressember helps victims escape and recover by assisting with housing, counseling, legal aid, job training and more. You can learn more at Dressember.org

 Wearing dresses all month isn't difficult. especially when one of the dresses is this olive green pleather dress. I found this at a clothes swap. It was brand new with tags and I thought it was fabulous. 

Leather? No, Pleather.

I loved the dress and the pleated skirt was amazing. It seemed a little too long on me so I knew I would shorten it. The more I looked at it, the more I thought I would like the top as a jacket. It would make a great light-weight jacket. That meant it was time to start cutting. 

I was really afraid I would mess this dress up but I tried to be brave. I cut the top of the dress off. There was a little waistband between the skirt and top. I kept the waistband attached to the skirt. The pleather had a bit of stretch to it. It allowed me to pull the skirt on and off easily. The material did not fray at all so the waistband of the skirt was done.

The skirt needed to be shorter so I cut off about 6 inches. The skirt of the dress was originally not hemmed. It was just a raw cut edge. That made it easy for me. I measured and cut it  carefully. I folded the cut portion of the skirt over and onto the skirt to make sure I was cutting the same length. I left the cut edge of the new hem just like it was originally.

The top needed something to finish it at the waist. There was no snap or any closure at the waist.  Luckily the dress had a sash/belt to tie abound the waist of the dress. I had to use that finish the jacket somehow. 

I thought I could sew the belt right on to the cut edge of my new jacket. It would look nicely finished and I could tie it in front of the jacket to close the jacket at the waist.

I was afraid that this pleather would stick to the presser foot. I thought it would be a battle to sew this. It was fine. This was so easy. I was so nervous and anxious about it and it was all for nothing. I made sure to leave the ends of the belt hanging in front of the jacket evenly so I could tie them closed when I wore this jacket. 

I liked how the tie at the waist worked out. 

Look how great the stitches turned out!

Look at my smooth neat stitches! I tried to sew right over the stitches that were already on the belt. This material was so much easier to work with than I thought it would be.

 

I love them as a 2 piece sort of suit. The shorter skirt looks good with the jacket.

 

I wore the skirt over a denim dress because it's Dressember, not "skirtember". I am not much of a rule follower but I will try to wear dresses as directed this month. Thanks for reading along, now go make something fun for yourself.

 

 ***Year End Update- I love this and it is a new favorite. The jacket is great alone and so is the skirt.