women's dress to girl's maxi dress refashion

Last week I bought this Liberty of London for Target dress at thrift (for $6!). It's technically "my size" but it is incredibly shrunken and looks awful on me to boot. Sad! But the fabric is still gorgeous. I mean, it's Liberty of London! And luckily it was almost the right size to turn it into a maxi dress for my daughter, but it was a good three inches too long.

Originally I thought I would just hem it up, but then I looked at it closely. It has a really pretty double layered hemline with two different kinds of fabric. It's so cute I couldn't destroy it. Look at those tiny white and blue flowers!

so I had to figure out a way to shorten it without hemming. Since the skirt and the elastic smocked top were two different pieces sewn together, I figured I'd just take them apart and take those three inches off of the top.

So I seam ripped them apart, taking the top from the skirt:

Then I took the sides of the top in an inch on each side to fit my daughter better.

Then I took the skirt piece and hacked three inches off of the top.

Then I gathered the skirt again , and sewed it to the top piece with a zig zag stitch, so that it will still have some stretch.

Lastly I cut the straps off of the back (but not the front) of the dress. I measured how long the straps needed to be for my daughter's shoulders and sewed them back on.

The final result is amazingly adorable! She could not be happier with her "long dress." And if you love her headband, I show you how to make it here for only $0.66!

Happy girl = Happy mommy!