Refashioned Button Down With Peplum

It’s no surprise to anyone that if I refashion a shirt there’s a good chance it’s going to get a peplum. I know problems are technically “so 2016” .. but this girl loves problems and I don’t care who knows it! There’s just something about the lines and shape it gives to my figure that I really love.

I bought this blue and white striped shirt at a secondhand store because I love the stripes. But for some reason it wasn’t really getting a lot of wear, so I decided it needed a little make over. Honestly that’s probably because we don’t get a lot of long sleeve shirt weather down here… So I might end up taking the sleeves off at some point. It’s worth noting that this project only works if the shirt you are starting with is slightly too big for you and needs to be taken in.

For the most part, I follow the same steps as my peplum T-shirt refashion post here. However, with the shirt I wanted to play around with changing the direction of the stripes. This would have been easier if I was removing the sleeves, because I could’ve just use those to make my peplum. But for now I wanted to keep the sleeves so I had to get a little crafty.

After I removed the bottom of the shirt for the peplum, I ripped open and all of the seams and undid the hem and pressed out the pieces nicely. I then played around with some calculations based on how much fabric I had to work with and decided I was going to have my peplum pieces be 5 inches long. So I cut 5 inch wide rectangles in the full length of the shirt bottom piece I removed. I tried to pick a measurement that would give me an even number of pieces based on the shirt bottom I had. Then I rotated each of these pieces sideways and so them together in one long strip. Seeing as this was just a quick fashion project (and I didn’t want to give myself a headache) I didn’t stress about matching the stripes. After finishing the hem and short edges I gathered them to the width of my shirt bottom and reattached it.

The result is this fun button down with a perpendicular striped peplum. I’ll probably mostly end up wearing this with the sleeves rolled up which I think is a super cute look and the main reason I wanted to keep them. I love the way the peplum in this crisp poplin makes the shirt swingy and fun to wear.

If you haven’t tried putting peplums on random slightly-too-big-for-you button down shirts yet I highly recommend it. It’s a super simple way to jazz up a plain ole button down.


Happy Sewing!

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Amy Nicole Studio
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