Altered Clothes - take 2

boring blue cotton dress, thrifted in Tucson, blah, blah, blah

I am not even sure why I bought this dress in the first place.  I guess I thought it would be an easy thing to throw over my swimsuit in the summer, even though I have about a hundred an one little cottony summer dresses like this.  ( just as many as the number of purse/bags now!) 

I was about to give it back to the thrift store in my weekly bag-o-thrift-store-crap-to-drop-off when I thought of putting some little front pockets on it.  I realized that my favorite summer dress have some sort of pockets and that I tend to wear them over and over instead of ones without pockets.  This idea led me to my massive and random stack of embroidered thingies: runners, doilies, hankies, aprons, etc from which to choose a pocket material.  It was becoming hard to choose because I have a ton of mediocre type pieces and I was looking for something outstanding.  Then I hit payday.  See below:

1 of 3, using two for the pockets

Tada!  Birds!  I lurve me some birds, I do, I do!  So I found these three linen doily type pieces that have a bird embroidered on them and and edged with some blue and white crochet/tatting/knitting?  Don't know ,but its lovely.  So I folded each one in half and figured out how to place them for pockets.

close-up of pockets

This will be a little difficult to explain but I pinned the right side of the oval shaped doily down first and sewed it to the dress in a half circle shape.  This created the inside of the pocket, or a pocket lining, of sorts.  Then I folded the top of the oval down, over the bottom half circle, wrong sides together now, to create the lovely pocket with bird you see above.  I just top stitched that down, over the first row  and now I have a lined pocket, no cutting involved, and doily is still in perfect shape in case I decide to ditch the dress, it gets ruined, too small, etc.  Thus I will be able to take the doilies off and reuse them.  Smartyparty!

love, love, love

finished altering

Now i just need to wear it!

Upcycle, rework, and try again!  Dance, dance, dance!  Sing, sing, sing!