Upcycled Girl's Dress

I was wondering if there is a difference in the terms recycle, upcycle and repurposed. I think they are kind of interchangeable. So I did a search for upcycle. The one definition I found said "transforming used things into other useable things of great value." Hmmmm. I don't know if this dress qualifies as far as a great value goes. But it does meet the definition of recycled though.

One day I found part of a piece of clothing in my sewing room. When I say part, I do mean that part of the garment was missing. Chopped off. I asked Taylor about it. She said she cut up something because it was too long and she thought I could make her cousin something with the part. Oh I love it when another project gets added to the list.

The "part" sat around for maybe six months and I decided Christmas vacation was a good of time as any to do something about this and clear it out of the house. My vision was a low-waist, flapper inspired dress. I found a t-shirt in my stash. It was one of my many one dollar deals at Wal-Mart this year. My sister sent Kayla's measurements and I went to work. My guestimate was that the tshirt would hit Kayla at the hip or hopefully lower. Then the skirt would put the length to the middle of the calf. So far, so good.

I first had to trim the top of the skirt. It is gauzy fabric and it has a mind of it's own. Unfortunately, in order to even the top out, I had to cut off most of the pink/mauve top. After the flounce was ready to go, I took my t-shirt and cut off the lower hem.

I basted a lining to the flounce since it was pretty shear. I then gathered the two and attached it to the bottom of the t-shirt. I then serged the seam.

I was going to applique a frayed flower on the skirt and because of the location, I had to heavily pin the area.
The embroidery would be over the gathers so they needed to lay nice and straight.

Here's a picture of the beginning embroidery process.

And here is what went to the landfill when I finished.

And viola! The finished frayed flower applique. The applique still needs a little bit of trimming. You can see that I also used fabric from the skirt on the flower.

So let's tally this up. Flounce was free.T-shirt was $1.00 and came from stash. Lining was from stash that I purchased on clearance this summer. I used 15 inches of lining at maybe $1.00/yard. Now in my mind, this was a free garment because I didn't have to go to the store to buy anything. My spouse would do the math differently and tell me it cost maybe $1.50. Still a darn cheap garment.