Anyone who’s recently planned or helped plan a wedding has seen these convertible bridesmaids dresses from Nadia or Two Birds:
The idea is simple: a jersey skirt connected to two thick, very long straps that you can wrap around yourself in a million different ways. Those four brown dresses you see in the photo above? They’re the same dress, just styled different ways. Pretty cool, huh?
What isn’t cool is that these dresses cost more than $300. What?! For a super simple jersey dress? I love that you can wear it so many different ways, but is it really worth that much? I don’t think so.
So I made one this weekend. I bought three and a half yards of black stretch fabric (I wanted something that wouldn’t cling as much as jersey) for $40 and followed Rostitchery‘s directions. And ta da!
Not bad for a $40 dress, right? There’s only one seam (at the waist) and I didn’t do any hemming whatsoever, so the edges look a little rough. I don’t mind that though, especially for my first try. The stretch fabric I picked is thicker than jersey, which looks great on, but it caused me some problems–five layers of the stuff was too much for my sewing machine, so I had to sew it all by hand. In the end, it probably took me about an hour and a half to finish on my first try. I’m pretty pleased with myself! Now I just need a reason to wear it.
just married. 