A Beautiful Disaster: Refab! Plaid Do-Over

So, about a month ago, I found this dress at a local second hand store. It was about 6 sizes too big for me, and was just kind of weird. It had buttons, and pockets, and weird sleeves, and strange side pleats. The up side? I loved the plaid because it is so retro! But this monster definitely needed some help.

What is this??

I knew for sure I wanted to keep the buttons, but nearly everything else had to go. So I started by taking off the pocket, sleeves, and strange side pleats.

After all of that, I was left with this beauty!

Help!!

Please help me!!

I got to work trying to make this beast fit. This took a while. How I do this is I put the dress on inside out and then just start pinning it smaller until it fits. Sometimes I have to make a few adjustments to make sure my seams are straight before I sew it up, but this seems to work pretty well for me. Now, if I only had a dress form! Aaaah...the things I could do. Back to work!

Could it be????

After bringing in the sides, the dress still did not quite fit. There was still way too much fabric in the back. My solution? Darts! Basically, I laid the dress out flat and pinned where the fabric refused to lay down. Very scientific.

Why is this picture sideways?

Whirrrrrr!

Finally!!! It fit! Now for those sleeves. I can't say that I have ever sewn sleeves before, at least not successfully. So, needless to say I was a little nervous about this. I came up with a plan. I found an oxford-style shirt in my closet that was a similar fabric and had a sleeve shape that I liked. Then, I just laid my pieces of fabric over that shirt and used it as a template! To my surprise, it actually worked! On the first try!

I do need two sleeves.

Now, pin that sleeve!

I sewed those babies in place. It was all downhill from here! All I had left was to hem the bottom (I shortened it up quite a bit from the original) and hem the edges of the sleeves.