Dressing gown to kimono blouse

A while ago I bought this cotton dressing gown from Marks and Spencer:

Bland, no? And yes, that is a dog nose near my slippered feet.

I wanted a cool dressing gown for summer, and I had a M&S voucher. This was the only one I could find that I liked. You can't see it from this picture but it has a nice floral-type pattern, although I'm not particularly keen on the mocha colour. I'm not sure I ever was, but I think I convinced myself it was OK. However, I ended up never wearing it regardless of the colour because summer is generally too warm for a dressing gown anyway. So, I decided to make it a bit more interesting...

I started with a pack of Dylon fabric dye for hand use in Tulip Red. This garment isn't remotely delicate, being make of 100% cotton, but for a single lightweight garment I find that hand dye is more cost-efficient (cheaper to buy, one washing machine cycle rather than three). It does involve standing and stirring for an hour, but stick me a TV programme on that I like and I don't mind too much.

The dye took beautifully and I was left with a nice, de-blanded dressing gown. It was way too long to be worn as day wear as it was though, so I measured from the hem to where I wanted it to sit and chopped off the bottom.

Pretty colour!

Typically I measured a bit wonkily and chopped off more than I intended to. Oops. Never fear though, it was still long enough to make a blouse, just not as long of one as I'd planned. I hemmed the bottom of the gown up and ran a line of stitches down it. Then I unpicked the right hand belt loop from the side seam and stitched the seam back up.

Belt loop be gone!

I chopped off the ribbons from inside the waist that are meant to hold the gown closed (but in reality nobody ever uses, do they?).

Goodbye useless ribbons! It's been fun. 

Last but not least I measured the height of the remaining belt loop from the hem and added a big button in a contrasting colour to the opposite side, so that I can use the belt loop as a buttonhole to keep the blouse closed. 

It's bigger than it looks, honest.

The blouse is wearable as it is in this state, although it is loose around the waist. I want a certain amount of looseness around the hips and bust so that it billows a bit, but in order to draw it in at the waist it needed a belt. I had a black elasticated waist belt I could have used (and probably will for a casual look), but I wanted something a bit dressier so I googled a few youtube videos and webpages and made myself a quick obi belt (quite impressive for someone who never makes things from scratch!). It anyone is interested I'll put a post up soon of how I did it, but its very easy.

Tah-da! Please forgive the backdrop, our house is far too tiny to have any useful blank stretches of wall.

I think this will look much nicer with long hair tied back, but I'll have to wait a while for that! In the meantime I think it looks none too shabby. The colour is a vast improvement and it feels quite glamorous. It's also very comfortable, which in my world is extremely important!