Back in October, I was out shopping for a Diwali saree for my maid and I wound up buying a few for myself as well. Not to wear as sarees...but to cut up and USE!! The first saree I did this to was turned into my "Think Pink" skirt, and the 2nd one has found a new life as a Simplicity 2638 Maxi dress.
The saree was cobalt blue print with an odd geometric/floral/stripe section for the front pleats on the saree. The blouse piece was a matching blue with a simple and more subtle wavy line print. This is a terrible an atrocious job wrapping the saree, but it gives some idea of what it was meant to look like.
The first thing I did was cut the blouse piece off the end, and then I chopped out the funky printed "pleat section". I had plenty of the less crazy print to cut out the dress. I decided to use the blouse piece for the midriff section to highlight the waist of the dress. This was my initial trial to see how it'd look:
I started off great. Flying along even. I had some cobalt blue fabric on hand to use as the bodice lining, everything was good. When cutting out the pattern I made the bodice slightly larger than a size 14, just in case. Well, I shouldn't have. The armholes gaped, the backed gaped. Silly me, didn't check the fit before I sewed the bodice onto the midriff OR the midriff onto the skirt. (I will file that info in the: "don't do that again" folder of my brain) What a pain! I didn't want to completely take the midriff off, so I unpicked in pieces and took the bodice in under the arms and along the center back. Once I got that squared away, I had to take in the entire center back seam about 3/4" all the way down.
Rather than struggling with an invisible zipper, I used a center lapped regular zipper and I think it worked well. The color of the zipper was perfect so if it does peek out here and there, it's no big deal. I wound up hand stitching the bodice opening above the zipper because due to my post-assembly alterations it was impossible to turn in inside out to sew normally.
I am very pleased with the end result:
A peek at the back:
At first I was planning on not hemming the dress and keeping the selvage edge from the bottom edge of the saree. Eventually I decided to NOT be lazy and to NOT introduce another pattern into the dress, and therefore NOT make people say "huh?" when they look at my hem.
