Belted Cardigan

Another two piece makeover today, I suppose since it is fall it's all about layering.  I was at the mall last weekend finding shoes for a wedding I was in and kept seeing lots of cute girly outfits in the windows with belted cardigans.  I thought the look was really cute and wanted to try to do something along those lines but on the cheap of course!





I had a very dowdy dress that I picked up at a yard sale or .50 and another sweater from my dollar a bag church sale.  The sweater was nothing special and the dress was downright unattractive.  BUT the good thing with the dress was I thought the blue and pink color scheme was pretty and there was plenty to work with.  The good thing with the sweater was for a second hand white sweater it surprisingly had zero stains and was nice and soft.

(1)I started by taking the sleeves off the dress.  I knew I was going to be layering the sweater on top of it and it would be more comfortable sleeveless.






(2) Next I took the buttons off as I was going to be sewing the front together and turning it into my favorite cleavage enhancing V neck.  

I pinned the front closed and tried the dress on to perfect where I wanted the V, as well as where I wanted to cut the skirt to turn this into a shirt.  I cut strips from the leftover skirt to create a long belt.

(3)Now for the sweater, I used some dark thread to illustrate the technique for cutting a sweater.  This sweater was super easy as it has vertical stripes.  One stripe was directly down the middle so made a great guide for where to cut.  As you can see I sewed a line of straight stitch on either side of where I wanted to cut.  I then turned the cut edge under and sewed it in place. 






Finished product!  I put my new cardigan on over my new floral blouse, and wrapped my snazzy belt on top of it all.  I was really tickled with how this came out.  I even ended up keeping the pockets that were in the dress.  After wearing this today I have a couple ideas of how I might like to tweak it a little, maybe try it with a navy cardi, and layer a lace cami under?  A re-do of a re-do?

Hope you have a wonderul Thanksgiving!

-Lucia