How to Make a Dress Into a Two-Piece: Cute Skirt & Crop Top Set

Tools and materials:

• Oversized dress
• Wide and thin elastic
• Scissors
• Pins
• Sewing machine
• Safety pin
• Measuring tape
• Fabric chalk or marker

This is the dress I’m going to work with. As you can see, it’s really large and baggy, so I have a lot of material to work with.

1. Mark the length of the skirt

First, I marked the length of the skirt. You can gauge the skirt length using your own measurements or preferences.

2. Mark the width of the hips

My hip measurement is 40 inches, so I divided that by 2 to get the measurement I need to mark here. Also, I shortened this to 18 inches because the fabric is stretchy.

3. Cut out the fabric

Cut the fabric along the lines you’ve just measured. 

4. Pin and sew the skirt

Turn the fabric inside out. Pin and sew the side seam.

5. Fold the top of the skirt

Fold the top of the skirt over twice, leaving enough room for an elastic waistband. Pin and sew down.

6. Insert the elastic

Feed the elastic into the skirt waistband. Use a safety pin to help you. Then, sew the ends of the elastic together and seal the opening.

7. Cut out the top fabric

Actually, I’m not going to use the top of the dress to make my tube top. Instead, I cut out the remaining fabric from the skirt.

8. Pin and sew the tube top

Place the two pieces of fabric on top of each other, then pin and sew the side seams.

9. Hem and sew the elastic

I was feeling lazy, so I simply sewed my elastic to the top of the tube top as I was hemming the raw edges. In my defence, this stretchy fabric is a little hard to work with, and I was losing patience!

The elastic is the size of my bust, so this ensures the tube top fits my body. I also hemmed the bottom of the tube top by folding and sewing down, for a clean finish.

10. Insert strips for ruching

My dress already came with these two tunnels of fabric on the skirt part, so I decided to use them. I snipped the tunnels open and inserted elastic, but you could make strips from the same dress fabric for the same ruching effect.

11. Secure the ruching

Once the elastic is fed through, tie the ends at the waist end of the skirt, or stitch together and close the fabric opening.

How to make a dress into a two-piece tutorial

This is my finished DIY two-piece outfit! I hope you enjoyed this tutorial on how to turn a dress into a skirt and crop top. Let me know what you think in the comments section!