Remaking Old Clothes 1: Black Dress

Hello! With all of this time in lock down I have had a lot of time to think, as I'm sure so many of us have. One thing I've thought about a lot is the clothing industries impact on the environment and on the people who are extremely underpaid and overworked in order to make fast fashion clothing items. This is a huge awful, global problem and one person is certainly not going to solve it. But I thought about how I could minimize my own personal impact and if many of us try to do even a little better, perhaps together we could make a truly meaningful impact on these problems. 
 
So in service of that goal, I have decided to try to make as much of my wardrobe myself as possible and what I cannot make I will buy from manufacturers who use ethical practices in their business. I have also decided to try to remake clothes that I would otherwise have to throw away due to wear, poor fit, or some other problem that means it cannot be donated or re-sold. I am by no means an expert seamstress, in fact I am just beginning to learn. But I wanted to share my journey to hopefully inspire other beginners to try some sewing themselves! 

Which brings us to project number one! I have had this black dress since high-school: 

17 year old me trying to look contemplative

I have loved wearing it and frequently have worn it under blouses and sweaters for years. But after about 8 years of near continuous use, it was a little worse for wear. The waist had stretched out and the lace detailing at the top had many holes and threads coming unwoven. This was not an item I could sell or donate, so if I didn't find something to do with it I'd have to throw it out.

So I decided to seam rip the whole thing and see what I could do with it.


Here's the dress after an actual eternity of ripping apart all of the tight machine sewn seams and finishing. Once I had this fabric I had grand plans of being able to both make this into a skirt and add a pocket to said skirt. That....did not turn out to be the case.

For my next step, I measured around my waist and found out how long I'd need to make the waistband and then measured out an appropriate length of fabric. No one piece ended up being large enough for the waistband, so knowing I'd have to sew several pieces together and they'd eventually need to have a clean, straight line to make the waistband, I trimmed the pieces I had into rectangles with straight edges and shorter sides of equal length.



After this was done I stitched all the waistband pieces together. I don't yet have a machine, so I did this by hand using the back stitch. If you want an explanation about the back stitch and other basic garment construction techniques please check out my video on basic hand stitches 



Once this was complete I pressed and finished all of these seams. I like to fell my seams to finish them (which is like a whip-stitch, but sewn very carefully so it is not visible from the outside of the garment) but whatever method you prefer will work fine! It is important to press your seams in the correct direction. Since I only really had side seams here, I pressed them both toward my back. For a much more detailed explanation, please take a look at this video here: Basic Pressing Techniques

After all of this pressing and finishing work I put a piece of interfacing in the waistband. You can use whatever interfacing you like, but I used fusible interfacing in black because I could just iron that to the fabric of my waistband and I wouldn't have to sew it in. And now, finally, it was time to attach the waistband to the skirt!



This was HARD! I think it took me something like 5 attempts to finally get it right. What ended up being easiest for me was to finish my waistband first and then attach it rather than attaching the waistband on the raw edge and then turning it over to finish it. I think that the "unfinished" attaching method would have probably resulted in a neater finish, but I just could not get it to work. For a much better explanation of these methods please take a look at these books.




Throughout this project the Reader's Digest Complete Guide to Sewing and the American Duchess Guide to 18th Century Dressmaking have been incredibly valuable in learning how to construct garments and other sewing projects.

At the end of all of this I ended up with this skirt.



Button detail (and me not knowing what to do with my hands)


Me doing my very best model impression

It absolutely has flaws. The waistband is still a little larger than I'd like which I think may be at least partly caused by this being a knit fabric, so even with interlining it does not keep it's shape particularly well. Also, the seams of my waistband do not perfectly line up with the seams of the skirt. But with a belt it is a completely wearable and versatile skirt and I have successfully saved it from a landfill. Plus I learned a lot while making it and am excited to apply these new skills to the next project.

Let me know in the comments if you have any plans to remake your old garments, I'd love to see before and after pictures of your projects!

P.S. How many times can you spot my cat, Mona, in the background?


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