Revamped: White House Black Market Dress to Skirt

Shortly after I bought this White House Black Market summer dress at a thrift store for $3.50, I altered it. It was my initial plan from the beginning (as I do not like wearing strapless dresses). I wanted to do it sooner rather than later for two reasons: it’s summer now so I could wear it, and if I lost momentum and set it aside—I might never get around to doing it.

First, I marked on the dress where I wanted to cut it. Then I took out the zipper. The dress was well made so it took a bit more effort to take it apart.

I cut the skirt portion off. At first I thought I’d use the zipper that had been part of the dress as the zipper in my skirt. However, it was an invisible zipper, and I thought that a normal zipper would be easier to put in the skirt (as it already had a seam). Lacking a regular white zipper, I used a black zipper. I sewed the zipper to the skirt. It had a lining that I attached to the top of the skirt and around the zipper.

Ideally, I wanted a white waistband. However, I didn’t have any white fabric that matched exactly. And it would have really bothered me to have the pure-white skirt fabric next to an off-white waistband. So, I decided to use some black fabric I had instead. I cut out and sewed the waistband to the skirt. Then added eyes and hooks to the waistband and I was done.

This took me about 8 hours to do as I am not a speedy sewer. Overall, I’m happy with the skirt and think it turned out well.