Totally vintage-inspired dress and upcycle. Pretty proud.

Totally vintage-inspired dress and upcycle. Pretty proud.

• 12.13.2011

Pretty proud of the makeover I did on this vintage piece last weekend to wear to a coworker's holiday cocktail party on Saturday. Let me tell you the story.

Ages ago (in the Goodwill bins, I think) I picked up this fabulous 60's lace dress that had a few holes and no zipper.  But this lace is great, heavy, not scratchy at all... they just don't make it like this anymore.  Well, I bet they do, but it's megaspensive!

Poor dress...

But I had a vision for it.  I hate cutting up vintage stuff, unless it's not really repairable or wearable.  But this kinda was, and not my size anyway.  I imagined the bodice part becoming the overlay on a dress, and the skirt being a contrast skirt for another dress!  Still need to work on that one, but I did turn the bodice into something cute and wearable!

My vision was sort of early 60's-inspired but shorter and more playful.  Zooey Deschanel does this look quite well, duh.  Kind of in the same vein as this kind of ModCloth dress...

So I cut it apart.  (For how to cut apart and reuse a vintage garment, see this post).  For the skirt and base bodice fabric I used some navy twill someone gave me tons of a while back (score!) and Simplicity 2444, without any sleeves.  I cheated a little in that I didn't give the dress a lining at all; I used the right side of the navy and the right side of the lace, so all my seam allowances are exposed on the inside.  To finish off the armholes and neck opening I used a black cotton sateen bias strip.

Super fast and easy way to do it!  This took me... let's see, I can time it by what I was watching at the time... one episode of Pan Am and three episodes of New Girl.  I was catching up on Hulu.

I cut down the center back, just for fun, to give it a V-neck line.

O' course, it's December and was about 36 outside when we left, so I had to have tights and closed-toe shoes!

I felt very retro and cute!  And I was wearing my new fave lipstick that stays on FOREVER so I had red lips ALL evening.  Revlon ColorStay Ultimate Liquid Lipstick--this color is Top Tomato.  Looooove it I have like three colors.

And my silver nail polish and rhinestone jewelry helped keep it festive!