Quick (re)Fashion - Southern Rock Frock

For some reason a few nights ago I dreamed about cutting up some shoes and a dress. The shoes were my oldest pair of Chuck Taylors, black high-top ones, now faded to gray and beat to hell, that I have had since high school. The dress was a thrifted "Erika Collection" brand from last fall, and even though I liked the grayscale vertical mixed print (reminds me of a saddle blanket), I had only worn it as an under layer "skirt" due to the bodice being pretty snug.

In my dream I'd envisioned "summerizing" the shoes and wearing them with the dress, converted to a sundress with cute bow-tied strappy shoulder ties.

However after I'd snipped the upper part off of the dress (from armpit up) and tried it on, the remaining bodice was still too tight, like unsightly tube top spillage ya know? I didn't give up though. Possibly I could have revised my plans by slashing open the bust darts and inserting thicker straps instead of thin ties, but I was short on time so I improvised.

For fabric to make the "straps" with, I had cut off about 9 inches from the length of the dress, and then pulled that section's side seams apart for two pieces of approximately the same width. Faced with my strap quandary, I played around with those pieces as they were and liked how they looked keeping them wide and using them as fluttery sleeves instead.

The only sewing I did was to folded-edge hem all my cut lines and then sew the "sleeves" to the waist from the side seam in and then up their off center fronts. In the back there wasn't enough length left to overlap down to the waist, so I just shortened them and sewed to the top of the back bodice as I would have a strap.

The dress had its own self belt ties at the side seams which I left intact but bow-tied them in front along with a black strappy tie from another secondhand dress. This added some visual interest plus covered some of my wonky sewing at the waist. For about an hour of work I thought it turned out pretty good and will be able to wear the dress a lot more now.

It was good to get the 'ole sewing machine out for a quickie. Admittedly my craftsmanship wasn't the best, but at least I hemmed and tied all my knots. Were I to do it again, I'd try to leave an inch or so more length, my slip started showing toward the end of the night. :)

Not to forget the shoes... in high school I had converted a pair of white low-tops to be open toe slip-ons by: cutting the upper heel off; cutting the tongue out; and carving the rubber shell toe off. I've worn them more that way than I ever would have as the original low-tops, and have gotten many compliments on them which is fun. I'd recently started wearing them again which may have been why I had "summer chucks" on my mind for this project.

I knew I'd thrown my old black ones in a keepsake box during the move. In a stroke of luck I was able to find them (on the shelf above the water heater in the coat closet of course, where else?). The poor things were so worn out I didn't feel bad about ripping the tongues out and cutting the shell toes off. I'm pretty sure I had worn these for both of my restaurant kitchen slave jobs, so sweat & floor grease/grime had weakened the canvas fabric in several areas already. Airy AND authentically vintaged! I left the high-top & heel area intact this time, hoping to achieve a lace-up sandal look. I'll probably get several more wears out of these babies now, at least until the soles fall off.

So where did I wear this? Stew and I went to the Kid Rock & Lynyrd Skynyrd show in Raleigh last night, our first date night in a while.

We chilled on the back lawn and had fun people watching...

Here is our view during the opening act. About two hours later it was packed, a fight broke out to the right of us, and we had to stand to see anything other than butts.

All that work on my shoes was for naught...

Like the girl on the left below, I totally forgot to wear my cowboy boots!

See I wasn't the only crazy chick there in a skirt/dress, I just missed the boot memo, duh.

Stew doesn't own any black socks, white wife beater tanks, or plaid shorts... So he was totally dressed wrong too. Plus no tattoos to show off (not on his arms & back at least). By the way, Stew decrees that it is totally lame to buy a concert t-shirt and then wear it that night. Also he thinks blasting the albums of the concert artists in the parking lot while you tailgate is overkill too. Just FYI. :)

A few more crowd shots... I love people watching! Especially in the south :)

We left after like 4 or 5 Kid Rock "songs" in order to avoid traffic. Are we lame or what? But we were able to zip right of there and made it to the nearest Cold Stone Creamery just before closing, yum.

Overall it was a good time. I got to meet a LiveJournal friend too but would have felt funny asking for a picture. Isn't it weird meeting people you've only known online? But fun weird.

Have a good weekend all!