Last fall one of the first youth group activities my daughter had was a tea-party.  The idea was for them to dress up in fancy dresses {unless they didn’t want to}.  Christine has always loved dresses and has usually had a few to choose from.  This fall was different, she’s decided she doesn’t like skirts or dresses – I’m assuming this is an age thing even though it makes me sad.  Anyway, we searched for something she liked and then one day we went to a bridal store.  This bridal store was selling demo dresses for $25.  A demo dress meant it had the company name stitched in the back and a hole cut or poked through all the layers.  They were from a company the store was no longer going to carry.

I have to say it was really strange to be in a bridal shop while my daughter tried on bridesmaid dresses.  In the end we found a dress that was a really pretty green and a style she liked that more or less fit on top.

As you can see it was rather long and “old” for an 11 year old.  {yes, you can also see my bedroom is painted dark – three dark brown walls, and one avocado green wall — I LOVE them.  I’ve lost track of how many years ago I painted them, it’s been at least three-possibly as many as five} So, we went to work with fixing it to be age appropriate.  She wanted the bottom to have pick ups – this was a perfect way to easily shorten the dress the foot+ that needed to come off.  😀  I just shorten the most interior liner layer to the correct length then I used big multi-colored button to pick up the other layers.  I sewed through all the layers to the lining.  I started at the bottom and work my way up not putting any on the bum so it didn’t look like there was a bustle.  Because the top is just spaghetti straps, mom took her on a different day and got a women’s 2x Nordstrom, dark brown, t-shirt and I made a bolo jacket she could wear over it.  She wouldn’t let me take pictures of her with it on, so you’ll have to trust me that it looked better on her than it does hanging on this hanger.