Muumuu Redo

I have seen these muumuu makeovers on the internet before and wished that I had an old muumuu to redo myself.  Then, the other day (which in my method of time keeping can be yesterday or two years ago) my workout buddy Nancy asked if I would like to go through her father's house to pick out what I liked.  He had moved out and no one was interested in putting on a garage sale.  I was, of course, overjoyed at the prospect. I love old stuff, I love free stuff, and I love looking at other people's houses. This was a win win win!  I found a large box full of goodies, including this red, white and blue muumuu in one of the closets!

I forgot to take a picture before removing the right sleeve.  You get the idea.

I searched for a good tutorial online and found newdressaday.com.  It seems like the usual redo for a muumuu involves ripping out the sleeves so that the cool yoke detail is more obvious and then either shaping it to fit your body or letting it stay flowy.  I decided to leave it flowy but add a belt to give it a little bit of shape.  My pictures are, as usual, deplorable but I feel that I have sunk to a new low with my standing on the toilet shots.  Here they are!

First I removed both sleeves using a seam ripper.

Don't mind the dried concrete on my fingers.

Then I pinned the seams around the arm holes and sewed them flat.

When sewing something that I want to look good I never back-stitch.  Instead I leave my thread long and use a needle to put all of the threads to the wrong side of the garment and tie the ends together.  I think my sister-in-law Judi might have given me that trick.  She is a much better sewer than I am, you should check out her etsy shop HERE.

 

It still looks very much like a muumuu.

It doesn't help that I am wearing a fleece with a similar color so that you can't see the neck detail.

Then I decided the length I wanted and cut off the extra fabric.

I turned the cut edge under twice and sewed the hem.

I added a belt (not a good looking one, but one I grabbed at a bag sale hoping it would look better than it did) and did one last top of the toilet picture.

I am trying to decide if I should take in the top just a little bit so that the underarms aren't so large and so that there isn't quite so much fabric gathered on top.

Overall, if I can find I cute belt I think that I will definitely wear this dress this summer!  I love doing things for my house, but it's nice to do something for myself as well once in a while!

Sorry about the potty shots, I do have a full length mirror in my house, but it is in this closet, so standing on the toilet is the only way to see my outfits for the time being.

If you look closely enough you can see the partially opened closet door behind all of my very necessary stuff.