Re-purposing Week: Day 2 Making things longer

I have a two for one special for y'all today.  Mainly because I did the exact same thing to two different things.  I guess technically only one of them qualifies as re-purposing and the other would be considered alterations.  Whatever.  haha

I am tall.  I also have a loooooong torso.  It was always hard for me to find shirts that actually cover my tummy.  When I was a teenager, I just wore whatever and if my stomach showed when I lifted up my arms it was no big deal.  NOW, I can't do that.  Do you want to know my secret?  Usually I still wear my maternity belt.  You know those things that help you keep your pants up when you are pregnant and wear your regular pants with them unzipped.  They have them at Target.  Next time you make it to target go to the maternity section and see what I am talking about.  I use this as my belt because I HATE belts.  I also use it to make sure my tummy never shows.  It's fabulous.  Sometimes it would just be nice if a shirt or dress/skirt was slightly longer.  I got this shirt from that free rummage sale we had a church about 6 months ago

It's a way cute shirt but it was too short.  When a shirt is super flowy like this, it makes it even worse to have it be short.  I didn't like the way the maternity belt look with it either. I decided it was time to get rid of the shirt or fix it.  I looked through my fabric and found something that I liked and went to work.  I measured the front of the shirt and the back of the shirt.  If you want to do this make sure to measure both.  I didn't the first time and the front of the shirt is wider then the back.  Measure your extra fabric to match the front and back.  Figure out how much length you want to add.  I added 5 or 6 inches to mine.  Take the two sides of your extra fabric and sew them rights sides together so you have a huge circle.  Pin it to your shirt ( right sides together again ) and sew it on.  I then ironed it open and put a top stitch all the way around.  I love how it turned out.

Now my shirt is PLENTY long.  In fact, now it is really wide and I feel pregnant in it.  Too bad for me I won't be getting pregnant again because it would actually be a super cute maternity shirt.  NOW, I need to take in the sides a little but I am sure it will take me another 6 months to get around to doing that!  So that was more of an alteration and not a re-purposing.  Here is my "re-purpose"

I bought this dress for 4 dollars at the thrift store

 And check out the cute middle ( yikes look at how messy my room is in the back ground of the picture! haha  I had a pile of laundry on the floor ready to go in the washer.  heehee )

I really loved this dress.  For me it was slightly too short.  It went over my knees a tiny bit but the second I moved it would come up over them a little and show too much.  I took another knit skirt I had that was black and too big.  The way the skirt was made you couldn't just simply take it in on the sides to make it smaller so I decided to cut it up and use the fabric.  It was another thing I got for free at the rummage sale.  I did the SAME thing I did with the black shirt.  I wore this to church on Sunday and I was looking pretty styling.  ;)

If you have a dress like this and want to make it longer another option would have been to add the black strip of fabric to the middle under your chest instead of the bottom.  Because mine was so cute in the middle I didn't want to cut it there but it would have looked really cute in the middle as well.  Look in your closet.  Do you have something that you could make longer and then you might actually wear more?  Make a pile of stuff and go to town.  I am telling you it is the best thing ever to do!  Alright have fun and I'll see you back here again tomorrow.