MAGAM Dec Project Part 1 - Cocktail dress to top Refashion

I looked at the 3 special occasion dresses that I wanted to refashion for the MAGAM (Make A Garment A Month) December challenge for a few days with no concrete ideas on what to do with them. So today I decided to just chop one of the dresses into a top. I thought that one can always use a semi-dressy top to wear with jeans or pants.

I chose the brown poly knit dress to refashion. The dress was a good fit but a bit blah in colour. I measured approximately where I wanted the bottom hem of the top to be and chopped it right off. Then I used my serger to do a rolled hem and voila! It's done!.

Before vs After:

I think it looks okay. I may wear it more now that it's a top. Now I just need to figure out what to do with the other 2 dresses......

Handmade Christmas Presents Challenge - Earrings!

I'm almost reaching the end of my Handmade Christmas Presents Challenge. I made earrings for my kids' teachers. I usually give gift cards as well as a handmade personal gift for the teachers a few times a year. One of the teachers actually wear my handmade earrings to the classroom and told me she appreciated them. As they are all women teachers this year, I'm hoping these sparkly jewelry will put them in a good holiday mood!

MAGAM December project - Which Holiday dress to Refashion?

I've been scratching my head to figure out what to do for the MAGAM (Make A Garment A Month) December project. The theme is 'December Dates'. Obviously December is a month of celebrations for many people. I have already made too many special occasions garments and didn't have enough occasions to wear them! So I am thinking instead of making something NEW from scratch, how about refashioning/upcycling one of the old special occasion garments?

I blogged about this 3 Simplicity 4877 knit dresses in 2012 (see here). I wore the red long dress 3 times, the sparkly floral long  dress once and the brown matte jersey short dress twice. They are all super comfortable and easy to care for. I want to refashion at least one of them into something else (if I have enough time I would like to refashion more than 1!). Which one do you think I should tackle?