Salute to Cute: Dress --> peplum top

Difficulty:

Cost:

Dress - $4
Zipper - $3

Hello again, Ali here.

Amy and I are still away from Dunedin in our respective home towns, enjoying our last bit of time at home before university starts again tomorrow.
We thought that we would dedicate this month to one of our favourite past times, op shopping! Every week this month we are going to post a tutorial showing how to alter various pieces that you can typically find while thrifting. As well as this, keep an eye out for our how-to guide to op-shopping!

I have been busily scouring second hand shops for gems and projects, and absolutely fell in love with this dress.

I love the pretty floral fabric, and there's so much of it!

It also fits me pretty well, so I've decided to make a top and skirt from it.

In this post I'll show you how to make a wee peplum top out of this vintage dress.

Peplum is a super flattering shape, nipped in at the waist and flared at the bottom, ideal for those days when you need to eat a lot.

Materials:

Vintage dress

Zipper

Tools:

Scissors

Sewing machine

Start by cutting the dress in half at the waist seam. Make sure the remaining top part is the length you want the fitted part of your top to be.

Next I cut the sleeves off the top.

To do this I put the top on and pinned a line from the shoulder seam down to the underarm. You might need to get a friend to help you with this, especially when pinning the line down your back.

Having the top on while I decided where to cut meant I could make the sleeve exactly how I wanted it, and tailor it to my body shape.

Then cut down your pin line, cutting on the sleeve, not body, side of your pins to give you a seam allowance.

Then you have a cute wee sleeveless cropped top.

If you're lucky the vintage dress you have will have a front that you like and you can skip this next step. However if you, like me, want to change the front of the dress this is one way you can do it.

I wanted a round neck, not a v, and wanted to get rid of the buttons down the front. So I used the same method as I used to remove the sleeves and removed the middle of the front of the top. I put the top on and pinned a line from the neckline to the bottom and cut the front of the top out.

I then used this cut out front piece to draft a new piece to create the neckline I wanted.

You can see below that I used a piece of the skirt fabric and laid the cut out top piece on top of the fabric and cut a matching piece. I then cut a round neck on my new pattern piece, which fit perfectly into my remaining top as it was the same shape as the original.

I then pinned my new pattern piece in place on the front of the top and sewed the two side seams.

After this I unpicked the side seam under the right armhole and inserted an invisible zipper.

Next I made the peplum piece.

Using fabric from the skirt, I cut a length of fabric which was 6'' wide and 65'' long.

I sneakily used the bottom of the skirt which was already hemmed so that I didn't have to hem it myself.

I then cut this length of fabric in half so that I had a front and a back piece.

I gathered the top edge of both pieces so that they fit onto the bottom of my top.

To do this I first measured the front of the top. I then sewed a basting stitch along the unhemmed edge of the front rectangle and pulled the bobbin thread until the piece was the same length as the front of my top. I then distributed the ruffles evenly along the piece and did the same for the back piece.