The world's longest refashion

Many, many years ago, a friend gifted me a new-with-tags dress among a large collection of other old clothes she was getting rid of.

The fit was everything that I avoid in a dress (strapless, blousey, ruffly, ankle-length, you name it!), but it had two things going for it: 1) a lovely lavender color, and 2) butterflies! I'm a sucker for anything with pretty insects on it!

My goal was to find a way to make this dress actually look good on me, and it only took 5 years and some change for me to figure it out.

The first year, I got as far as deciding I didn't like the dress in its current form, but by the end of the summer, I still didn't have any ideas as to how to fix it, and I lost interest in refashioning a summer dress when it was winter.

The second year, I tried it on at a few different lengths, and experimented with making the bodice tighter. I still couldn't decide what to do with it.

The third year, I finally settled on a cut: I would convert the dress to an empire-waist style with sort of Ancient Grecian vibes. 

I even went so far as to decide on where I'd cut the bottom portion from the top (the fold line at right in the photo).

The fourth year, I figured out how I would form the bodice: I modeled the neckline on a halter top I have.

I stuck in a few pins to mark key points, and got so far as cutting out armholes before I ran out of steam and let the project sit for another winter.

The fifth year, I really charged forward with the project! Over the course of a month and a half, I laboriously completed the basic shape of the bodice and attached it to the skirt.

But the sixth year (that's this year), I decided all the previous work had to go! The empire-waist dress was a stupid idea, completely impractical for my lifestyle and too complicated to sew! 

In retrospect, I have no idea why I came to this conclusion when I was in the home stretch, because what I ended up doing was certainly just as complicated, but I guess the years of frustration were finally getting to me. 

I decided instead to make the dress into a skirt!

I marked the top of a waistband with pins and cut it out.

When the waistband was folded over to the inside and not-so-artfully sewn down, here's how it looked!

All that remained was to put in a side zipper, which I accomplished more or less gracefully (at least from the outside view).

The skirt is not finished on the inside by any means, but it looks passable on the outside, so at that point, I decided my creation was good enough to wear in public.

And... here it is!

Now that I've had a chance to look at my photos, I think I should have worn it with less highly contrasting shoes and shirt, but after 5+ years of work, it's kind of miraculous I wore it at all!