Lace dress plus size. How to make small big

Lace dress trending now, but how often we ccan find what we want in the shops?
Especcially if you are a plus size?
Honestly speaking I can not find anything decent in the shops. All those dresses are designed I think for skinny ones just scaled and that's why it looks horrible when you try it on, leave alone the comfort of wearing those dresses....
So I decided to make one.... on a budget....
as you know that lase fabric can be quite costly and not always to your liking, so I found nice lace dress size 8 and with little bit of magic turned it into size 26....  I know sounds unreal...
proof is here...

How did I make it?
If used any ready made garment first thing is to unravel all the seams and pressed all pieces flat to make ready for cutting.

I used lace for front, back and sleeves. I also used a ready made pattern but it can be buit for you whichever you prefer.

  Layed the fabric and cut accordingly

 Joined together lace and underlay fabric and serged the edges

 Front piece underlay fabric and lace surged together

 

Back half pice ready for surging

 2 halfs of back piece sewn together

 Side pieces (fron and back) joined together creating the arm opening

 Wing attached to the back side piece

 Two wings (front and back) joined at the shoulder seam

 finishing the shoulder seam

 Pressing the arm opening

 preparing bias finishing tape for the neck opening

 Sleeve cutting - part lace part fabric

 Sleeve

First I assembled the dress without sleeves.

 

 

Here we go, new lace dress 

Repurposing old jeans

Sometimes we want something that isn’t available anywhere, so how do we get that. The answer is simple – make it yourself. But what if you have never made anything yourself? So it’s time to learn then.

I purchased linen trousers sometime ago but unfortunately fabric wasn’t of the best quality.  I wore them once and the fabric next to back seam has split. I mended it and it’s split again. I was so upset, new trousers absolutely impossible to wear and I feel sorry to bin them.

I was thinking what could I do with them, probably repurpose somehow. Then I decided to turn them into a skirt. 

We all have seen those skirts made from trousers and I don’t like that "trouskirt" idea. So I came up with proper skirt idea, and to make it more "skity" I decided to add some lace to it.

It was difficult to find lace that would match the style of skirt and a fabric  and would be of necessary width and pattern. So I decided to make one.

I started from cutting off the legs and uraveling all the seams

 

 Ironed on all the pieces and folded along the lengh

 Placed all 4 folded pieces on top pf each other and marked the centre

 Cut them in half to make 8 panels

 Measured hips and devided to 8 + 2cm seam allowance, in my case it is 18cm (top of the panel)

 Bottom of the panel made as wide as fabric permitted

 cuted first panel and used it as a guide to cut the restof the panels

 That was my mistake when unraveled the seams i was rushing and cut into fabric, so be careful not to repeat my mistakes. I mended the cut with zigzag or it can be covered with some applique

 Placed panel guide on to second piece  and cuted accordingly

 Did so for the rest of the panels

 Now it's time to sew panels into skirt. I used serger to assemble the panels, but zigzag will do too

 Next step was attaching the panels to the skirt top

 Tip: for plus size skirts you can see the fron part is shorter than the bottom, do not worry, after the skirt is finished this will look even, not like majority of hight street skirts are shorter at the back.
Here we go, skirt is ready and it can go like this, but I wanted to make it prettier so decided to add lace.

I left the hem just overlocked, but here many options available:, heming, adding lace or ribbons, ect

 Then I crocheted lase and attached it to the joining seam of the top and panels



























Here we go. My skirt is ready

My new skirt

    

I am happy with my new skirt and got the bug for it, so next one followed immediately

Same technology, Old jeans, some lace, ribbons...

Cut the top off and unravel leg seams. Ironing is crusial to make panels straight.

 Fold the pieces in half and cut

 

 Then measure hips and devide into 8 + seam allowance

Cut the panels 

Sew the panels same way and attach to the top of the skirt

 Add lace ot ribbons ect to your liking