Even freer shoulders

I was pretty pleased with myself when I restyled this shapeless bird dress to have a less confining and more trendy open-shoulder fit last spring, but the feeling was short-lived.

I tried to wear it a few times this winter, and I quickly discovered that the material is plagued by static cling. Even with a slip underneath, even sprayed liberally with water, rubbed with a light coating of hand lotion, and all the other tricks I usually use to mitigate static, it still managed to adhere to my thighs with every step. While I could have chosen to reserve it for the relatively humid days of late spring and early fall, I decided I'd be better served by re-refashioning it into a summer frock.

So, off went the sleeves! If my shoulders thought they were freed with the first iteration of this dress, they must be positively giddy with liberty now!

I finished the armholes with a single fold and a zigzag stitch (the lazy tailor's overlock!), and could have been done right there.

However, I now had all this fabric from the sleeves, and meanwhile the dress was still a pretty unflattering shape, so I decided to try to sew a sash from the sleeves.

In order to make the sash long enough to tie around my waist, I was going to need to salvage as much fabric as possible, so my first step was to un-hem the ends of the sleeves to gain about an inch each.

Even stuck end-to-end, though, the sleeves were still way short of belt size. I needed a minimum length equal to that of three sleeves, so with only two sleeves at my disposal, I was going to have to do some math. If I divided each sleeve into 3 sections lengthwise, I could double the sections up (to form a front side and a back side) and then sew them end to end, to get the length I needed.

So I folded each sleeve back in half lengthwise  and cut it into three strips. In the picture, the black line marks where I cut the folded sleeve.

Because the sleeve was wider at the shoulder than at the wrist, I left this part a little wider, to give the sash a little flare at the ends.

My next step was to join all the sections at their ends (I had left the bottom seam of one sleeve intact, so they two halves are already attached in the picture.

Then I put the front side and the back side together (inside out) and stitched around the outside edges, leaving just an inch un-sewn.

Through this opening, I turned the whole sash right side out, forming a tube, and finally hand-stitched it shut.

When ironed flat, this is how it looked.

And this is how it looks when worn!

The new tie belt is all well and good, but for incredible heat waves, like the one we're going through now (temperatures above 90 and heat index above 100), I have one more trick up my (non-)sleeve!

Before completely calling this project done, I sewed a slight curve into the waistline of the dress. Although mostly imperceptible, it turns the straight-up-and-down shift dress into something a little more slimming, so that it looks slightly better on me even without the belt. When the weather's as hot as this, I need as much breathability as I can get! So I'll wear my dress without the belt and enjoy the extra airflow that comes with a reasonably loose but subtly tailored frock.