I am not an expert in the world of sewing – and I never claim to be. However, I feel that anyone can create something pretty without knowing the names of all the different stitches – it just takes a bit of thought and some creativity. I recently turned a 1980’s Secretary Dress into a cute minidress using just my cunning and wiles – nd this is how I did it!

The dress looked like this – with a great long pleated skirt and a horrible baggy top half.

A 1980's Secretary Dress

Here are the stages of what I did:

1. Chop off the top section, leaving roughly an inch behind above the skirt
2. Unpick the bit of zip left in the skirt and remove
3. Hem the left over shirt down, making a neat waist section.
4. This waist section becomes the bust – so try it on and pin to the right tightness. I pinned it about 5 pleats tighter
5. Sew skirt together down the side to the desired tightness
6. Put sack like dress on, and tie a ribbon tightly around. Pin this carefully into place making sure it is straight
7. Carefully sew this ribbon onto the dress from left to right – but not all the way around.
8. If the fabric isn’t pleated, you may need to add a couple of darts, or do what I tried and make the bust smaller than the skirt.
9. If the fabric is pleated it will just continue to bunch and gather – so in this case you may have to replace the bust area with a stretchy fabric – I am going to have to do this to mine!

The finished article:

Homemade Dress

If this doesn’t make sense or if you have any questions, just ask in the comments and I will try to explain