Dress to skirt to shirt

Remember the Indonesian Princess (Gypsyish) dress that I later made into a skirt?

Well, after all that work, I still wasn't happy with it. Or, more precisely, I wanted to try out a new trend (the sheer long skirt over the short inner liner that I've gushed about so much) using that skirt as my guinea pig. Sadly, it didn't work. In a tragic miscalculation, I cut the liner way too short, making it entirely inappropriate to wear in public. Since I didn't have any other liners lying around to replace it with, I decided to go in a completely different direction with the overskirt (which I still loved for its dramatic and romantic floral design), turning it into a blouse.

Lately I've been really into the loose, baggy, see-through tops that you can wear over a camisole. I recently got two in knit or crocheted varieties, but I thought the sheer fabric from the former-skirt-former dress would make an especially nice baggy layering top.

Fortunately, it was really easy to do.

I laid out the fabric, pulling it slightly up in front so that the front would be shorter than the back.

Then I stuck some pins in it where I thought the shoulder seams should go, trying it on in the mirror to see how I felt about the length. I was OK with that, so I sewed the shoulder seams in permanently.

Next, I picked out a few inches of the side seam using my seam ripper, to make arm holes.

I cut off the top portion above the new shoulder seams.

Then I cut a nice rounded hole for my head to go through!

The bottom hem of the skirt had originally been sewed without any overlocking or finishing of any kind, so I didn't feel bad at all about doing my arm holes and neck hole the same way.

Here's the shirt after it was finished—basically it's just a big rectangle with some holes in it!

But it looks so elegant when you're wearing it! As long as you're not paying too much attention to the long threads that are fraying everywhere because none of the hems are actually finished!

I found a bamboo grove for my final photo shoot...and naturally couldn't resist trying to climb it! The red welts that are now all over my legs say I probably should have resisted.