How to Thrift Flip an Oversized Blouse Into 3 Clothing Pieces

Tools and materials:

• Over-large dress
• Old jeans
• Elastic for waistband
• Lace trim (optional)
• Top that fits well
• Pins
• Scissors
• Sewing machine

1. Cut the dress

Turn the dress inside out. Place your top on top of it, matching the shoulder or neck area as best you can.

Place a pin about an inch below where you want your new top to end.

Cut the dress at the pin line.

2. Skirt one

The bottom of the dress was wide enough to wrap around me twice with an overlap, so I had enough surplus material to make two skirts.

As the dress had a deep ruffle at the bottom and several inches of fabric above it, I decided to make a high-waisted flared skirt first.

Cut the fabric along the side seams. Join the short edges of the front section with the right sides together.

Turn down the top edge and sew it, leaving a small opening, to make a casing for the waistband. 

Cut the elastic to fit your waist and feed it through the casing. 

Secure the ends of the elastic and sew the opening closed.

3. Skirt two

For this skirt, I'm using the top section of an old pair of jeans and attaching the surplus fabric to it.

Lay the jeans flat and cut across them just below the back pockets, leaving a seam allowance.

Pin the skirt fabric to the jeans and choose how much of it you want to use.

Cut it to length and sew the short edges together. In my case, I removed the material above the ruffle.

Turn the skirt fabric inside out and place the jeans inside it, with the raw edges and right sides together.

Matching the skirt seam with the center back seam of the jeans, pin the skirt fabric to the jeans.

Use gathering stitches or pintucks to fit the skirt to the bottom edge of the jeans, if necessary.

Sew the skirt and jeans together.

4. Downsize the top

Remove the sleeves.

The sleeves of my dress were attached in an unusual way, so I cut off one sleeve following the line of the side seam and used it as a template to cut the other sleeve.

Lay your template top centrally over the dress.

I chose this particular top because it flares out at the bottom so I could still use the A shape of the original dress.

Mark the armhole and side seam positions of the top on the dress.

Cut out the new armholes, using the template as a guide.

Stitch straight down the side seam from the underarm and trim the excess fabric.

5. Insert the sleeves

Trim the sleeves to the correct length.

Turn the sleeves right side out and the top wrong side out.

Insert the sleeves into the new armholes, matching the underarm seams.

Pin and sew them into place, using pin tucks or gathering stitches where necessary to ease them to fit.

6. Hem

If your fabric doesn't fray, optionally bind the lower edge with a lace trim.

Otherwise, turn under and stitch a narrow double hem.

Thrift flip ideas

I really think this is another triumph of refashioning and thrift flipping!

I now have a blouse that fits me exactly as I wanted it to without taking in the side seams too much. I have two super cute skirts, one high-waisted and flirty and the other with a trendy denim top.

And I even used the fabric belt as a hair tie and threaded through the skirt loops as a belt!

As always, let me know down below what you think and if you'd consider doing something like this yourself.

Also let me know if you like it belted or not. I can't make up my mind about that!

Next, check out my post on 2 Easy Steps to Fix Holes in Jeans' Inner Thighs.