#43: Oh Hol-y Night(gown)

Uuuuggggghhhh! That's how I've felt for the past 2 weeks. I'm not alright. I've been really stressed lately, and on top of that, it's hot, I've had an extended crick in my neck all week from sleeping wrong, and I'm plagued by super painful canker sores after biting my cheeks and tongue up after my last orthodontic appointment. But the good thing is that I got my braces off!!! These retainers are taking some getting used to though...

Before Braces

After Braces

Anywho, with all the pain and busyness and stress, I haven't been able to work on any new projects, so I thought I'd feature one I made last Christmas. Perhaps reminiscing about Christmastime will help me to feel a little less irritable in the blazing Summer.

I don't feel all that well, so I'm not going to go into a lot of detail. Plus, I did this transformation before starting this blog, so I didn't tak any process pictures. Please forgive me.


I owned this deep-V halter dress for years, but it had no support whatsoever for a busty gal, so I had to say so long and cut the halter top part off. This left me with an airy skirt.

Before: De-haltered burgundy skirt

I also found this nightgown at a thrift store for about $1. I bought it because it was horrendous. Not only was it old-fashioned, it had yellow stains and was super holey.

Before: Holey Nightgown

Mega hole-age

But I loved the shoulder area and wanted to see what I could do with it.

I basically wanted to pull together the best of both pieces, so I cut the top off the burgundy dress (as pictured) and I cut the whole bottom off the nightgown, leaving the underarm seam in tact.

Then I pieced the two remaining pieces together by sewing the top lacy shoulders of the nightgown to the top of the burgundy skirt. I threw away the holey, stained top layer of the nightgown, and actually re-purposed the under layer into the lining for this purse I made for a previous post (click for a refresher):

Lining as cell phone pockets

Nightgown purse lining!

I sewed a thin strip of lace I had carefully removed from the original piece over the seam connecting the two pieces.

Once attached, I had to do something about the width of the skirt-turned-shirt area. Rather than sewing and taking it in, I instead sewed a hook fastener on both of the side seams of the burgundy part at the smallest part of my waist. Hooked together, it tightened the shirt by bringing the sides to the front and made a gathered effect.

To give it some flair and match the lacy feel of the shoulders, I took a simple button, wrapped it in some leftover burgundy material, and took some of the leftover doily material from this previous post, wrapped it around the button, and sewed the material on the other side. Then I sewed the newly-covered lacy button onto the hook clasp.

Lacey button

Thus, with no sewing machine adjustments for the width, I was done with my new shirt.

Here's again what the pieces looked like before:

Before: Burgundy de-haltered dress

Before: Holey nightgown

And here's the completed project:

After: Burgundy and lace blouse

After: From behind

Christmas in July? ... Nope.

I liked the gathered, drapey material in the front. Plus, the hook clasp makes it easy to adjust the size if need-be in the future!

Now I'm going to bed. I hope I can sleep away this pain.

Take care of yourselves everyone.

Until next time, blessings.