Young at Art Disaster Skirt Turned Dress

Every year I volunteer my time in some way in both kids classes at school.  This year I signed up for all of Aubrey's science labs and all of Bayne's Young at Art classes.  

I know better than to wear anything nice when I go, but for some dumb reason I wore this skirt when I went to help out with Young at Art.  It isn't my favorite, favorite …. but I still love it and didn't want it to get ruined.  Why oh why did I wear it?

Yep, you guessed it.  

It got painted.

In fact an entire bottle of black acrylic paint exploded in my hands when I was trying to squeeze a little out.  Fortunately, most of the paint landed on my shins, but my skirt got hit, too.  I tried to get most of the paint out, but it was a hopeless battle.

Here is a look at the product and the damage.

It's not horribly noticeable in the picture, but the skirt is basically unwearable now.

Unless, of course, you are a Sticky Genius, like myself.  Then there is always SOMETHING to be done to save it.

I happened past this skirt on Pinterest and thought the layering was a possibility.  I could maybe cut around the paint stains was my thought.

I decided to go for it.

I folded the skirt in half, with the majority of the stains facing up, so I could cut them out.

I accidentally cut the skirt in the opposite direction of the skirt in the photo.  I don't know why, I just went auto pilot, I guess.

Possibly, it could have been better cut the other way, but it probably made no difference.

Here it is opened up.  I ended up turning the bottom two cuts inside out to help hide the stain.  The fabric looked the same on the wrong side, so it wasn't obvious.  

I re-serged the side seams so that now the seams are on the opposite side (right side of the fabric now became the wrong side).  I serged right over the seam on the right side and let it cut off the old seam.

Then I pinned the top piece to the bottom piece and sewed them together with a straight stitch.

Then added the next layer.

I ended up sewing three lines of straight stitches to each layer for durability and look.

There was some extra fabric hanging under the stitching on the front side.

I carefully trimmed it down to give it an even look all the way around on each layer under the stitching line.

Here it is all together.

I tried it on and …. I don't know.  I just wasn't loving it.

I didn't like the way it was pulling at the point in the arrow.  

It just felt sloppy and I knew if I left it like this I wouldn't wear it.

(Please excuse my messy room)

I started pushing my brain to think of something I could do to make it wearable.

I unrolled the top fold of the waist band and pulled it up to see if it could work as a dress.  It looked kinda cute!  I can't really pull off a tube top dress, though, so it needed some straps.  I had some of this great brown, weaved, cotton strap left over, so I tried that out.

Looks better.  I need something to hide my tan lines and hold up the girls, ya know.  Not as young as I use to be ;).

I had a little more fun with the brown trim to make the dress look more …. well, like a dress.  

Here is what came of the Young at Art disaster skirt turned dress:

I zig zag stitched the brown trim around the top and gave it a halter strap.

I added a zipper because the trim took away the stretch of the jersey, making it more fitted, so I couldn't just slip in it.

I could have done a better job with the zipper.  I ran out of brown trim, but I might buy a little and put a  little strap with button closure to hide the gap at the top of the zipper.  I shouldn't have left any of the slack at the top of the zipper when I sewed it in.  

Over all I feel like I saved the skirt and turned my Young at Art disaster into an art project of its own.

It's definitely a summer time dress.  I can't wait until it warms up to wear it.  I'm dying to show the other moms that were there to witness my paint snafu how I cleaned up my mess.