Confused skater dress to sweet bolero

Today's refash comes from a slightly odd dress that I found in my local charity shop for £3. It's made from a nice stretchy but satiny base with a chiffon outer layer. The chiffon is textured with circular designs and is quite striking...but the style of the dress is a bit off-putting. I'm just not sure it knows what it's supposed to be. The bodice and skirt are similar to a modern skater dress, but the neckline is reminiscent of the 1950s. The sleeves...well...the sleeves are totally 70s. This dress is seriously temporally confused.

Errr...

I had originally wanted to turn this dress into a tunic that I could wear with leggings, but the shape of the skirt prevented this. I could have made a circle skirt from it by detaching the bodice, but that was a bit obvious (although I might still do that with the scraps at some point). I had a bit of an idea of what I wanted to do, so I started by removing everything I didn't want. First stop those atrocious sleeves!

Snip!

To do this I didn't unpick the seam, but instead cut the fabric of the sleeve away leaving the seam intact. This meant that I didn't have to worry about the end of the sleeve fraying before I had chance to hem it. Next I removed the big obnoxious zip from the back.

Sorry zippy, you're done.

I'll use the zip again at some point, just not now. Once this was gone I detached the skirt from the bodice. Again I snipped the fabric of the skirt leaving the seam intact - along with preventing fraying here, it also kept the layers together.

Chopped!

Next I stitched up the back seam where I had removed the zip.

This created a seam line but it looks as though it's supposed to be there so it's all good.

Next up was to cut a panel out of the front of the bodice, removing that sweetheart neckline. Don't get me wrong, I like a sweetheart neckline - my wedding dress had one. I just have an irrational hatred of it on this dress!

SO much better.

Then I hemmed those new edges so that they lined up with the remaining parts of the neckline. I continued this line of stitching all the way around the neckline for neatness.

This is actually starting to look wearable now. Finally.

Almost done! Next I hemmed the bottom edge, the one I had detached from the skirt.

My sewing machine did not like this - far too many layers over the seams! It kept giving me very unhappy jamming noises.

Finally, I hemmed the raw edges of the sleeves, where i had removed the disco-tastic sleeves.

Breathe a sigh of relief! Bell sleeves should have stayed in the 70s.

And...

Whoopee!

A cute little beige bolero! I can dress this up or down so I'm pretty happy with it. I have a tendency to fill my wardrobe with things I could never wear on a day-to-day basis, but this works as office wear or formal attire. The choice is mine!