 Hi you guys! Lindsay here. Welcome back to my channel, Inside to Him. So July 4th is right around the corner and if you've been watching a lot lately, you know that I wanted to refashion this dress I found at Goodwill into a skirt to wear to my Independence Day barbecue. I'll post a modeling video for you guys soon but today I wanted to show you just how I was able to take this J-Crew strapless dress and make it into a skirt fit for fireworks. First I chopped off the bodice, cut away the zipper, and removed all the pleating from the back of the skirt. Since the skirt of the dress was a circle skirt, that left me with the entire circle still intact except for the center back seam. I needed to make sure my skirt was going to be A, the same length all the way around obviously and B, the length I wanted. So I measured up from the hem 25 inches all the way around. I connected the dashes I had made when measuring and then cut along that line removing a few inches from the top part of the skirt. Next I needed a waistband so I used my trusty curve runner from Stitch Buzz, formerly Lunagraphix Co. and measured the length of the new waist seam. Then from the scraps that I cut away in the previous step I cut a waistband three inches wide and as long as the measurement I just took. For the waistband facing I simply laid out the self fabric waistband onto the lining that came with the original dress and cut it out. This will prove to be an annoying mistake later. I forgot that I needed to line the skirt anyway so I have no idea why I decided to just cut this waistband out from the center of the lining fabric I had available. So annoying. Anyways, I interfaced the self fabric, attached the facing by sewing along the top and bottom edges, then attached it to the skirt using all the proper techniques like trimming, clipping curves, understitching, and pressing along the way. Okay, we are pausing this voiceover so that I can show you this super cool technique that I just learned by taking this apart. So basically this is the center back seam and this is the folded over seam allowance of the center back seam and look what they've done. But they've attached it to the hem because this is a hem that's exposed I guess and they've stitched across it there to hold it into place and I just thought that was such a really cool idea to keep it from showing. So if you ever have like a knit or something that you're not hemming, this is how Jay Crue handles that issue to keep the seam allowance from going anywhere. Okay, back to the voiceover. I did not have the one and a half inch elastic that I needed so I just sewed a seam half an inch from the top of the waistband and I'm calling it a paper bag waist. I inserted the one inch elastic after measuring my waist and making note of that measurement. The back of this skirt is much wider than the front since the original dress had all of those pleats so I flattened the front skirt around the elastic as best as I could then gathered up the elastic around the back until it reached my waist measurement. Finally I sewed up the center back seam gave everything a good press and snipped any rogue threads. And voila my new American holiday inspired skirt. I cannot wait to wear this to my July 4th barbecue, the Labor Day Parade, Memorial Day Service and any other event where red, white and blue is warranted. I know this skirt wasn't made with a pattern but I hope it shows you that refashioning can be fun even when you're just winging it. Oh and if you're wondering what the lining, I ended up just buying a slip. Maybe one day I'll get around to properly lining it but this will do for now. So that's going to do it for me today. I hope you guys really enjoyed this quick tutorial and I will see you all very soon. Bye!