Pages

Thursday, June 2, 2011

DIY Post: Reconstructed Denim Dress

Yay! Finally a post! It's been a hectic week. A few good things happened and a few bad things happened, but it's all good. Anyway, I can't post the DIY shorts yet since I'm still working on it, so I'm putting up a DIY for the denim dress that I reconstructed. Actually worked on this way back, but I wasn't able to finish it until recently. Here's what you need:

Materials:

1. Any old/long denim dress
2. Fabric glue or sewing machine
3. Scissors

After being obsessed with Kate Bosworth's denim dress and not being able to find an equivalent where I'm at, I decided to just make my own mini denim dress. I started with this long denim dress I found at ebay for about $1.50.

Picture taken from eBay seller. 


Measure the length you want the dress to be in. You can tell that I already cut it up in the picture. Had to cut an extra 2-3 inches more because I found it too long still.

This is what I ended up with. After that, you want to cut out the sleeves. Cut from the part where the seams go so you have a cleaner edge. 

You can sort of see how it will look like as a mini dress. All that's left is to tidy up the seams. But before I did that, I decided to add a cute little heart design at the back. To do that, you need to mark off your center. Freehand a heart like I did or maybe use a stencil. 

Marked this off using those fabric highlighters.


Cut out the heart shape. Don't worry about not being too perfect with it as long as you get the general shape, it's fine.


Then take some extra denim, flip it and glue it to the inside of the dress; lighter side facing up to add some contrast. Afterwards, I frayed the edges of the heart shape.



For the seams, you want to iron it first to make it easier to sew or glue.


You can use fabric glue or a sewing machine - which I don't have yet :( - to clean up the edges. A word about the glue, this one is called Amazing Goop. Fabric glue is so tough to come by where I'm at. Had to order this one online and wait. (Yes, at times I feel like I'm living under a rock.) 

It's my first time to use this so I'm still waiting to see how it will hold up after repeated washings etc. When using this same brand, work in a ventilated area. 


The glue is so thick that it was hard to spread out. It's better to just make little dollops instead.


Then you have to slowly knead it into the fabric. You have to sew or glue all the seams: the bottom ones and the sleeves. Wait for the glue to dry for 24 hours, make sure to place it in a ventilated area. The smell from the glue is just too strong.

Here's the dress when it was finally done.


I'm still probably gonna tweak this a bit more. I originally wanted to bleach it so it wouldn't be so blue so I still might do that.

Here's the back portion. Just ignore my tattoo. :) Let me know what you think. If you have any questions, feel free to shoot me an email or comment. Cheers!