Sundress upcycle to shoulder bag by jembelish.blogspot.com

Sundress upcycle to shoulder bag

A couple of years ago, a friend brought back these beautiful dresses from Bali for my daughters. They did wear them a couple of times, but then told me they felt too scratchy and uncomfy, and so they've been hanging in their wardrobe ever since, unused and unloved! Which is a shame because the fabric is beautiful! 

 So I decided that we'd make use of them in a different way! Time for some upcycling!  And these bags are the result!

They were pretty easy to make - here's how!

First cut the skirt from the bodice of the dress like this:

These dresses had a small slit up the side, so I stitched that closed..

Then stitched the bottom edges of the dress together (right sides together) to form the main part of the bag:

Next, with the bag still inside out, put your hand in and flatten out the corner to make a point like this:

And put two pins in a line around 4cm in from the point, then stitch along this line

Now cut the two top parts of the dress to use for the straps, like this:

Before joining them together, turn the raw cut edges of both the bag and the pieces for the straps once and stitch.

Then pin the pieces for the straps to the side seams of the bag - right sides together. And stitch in place. Then turn the top rim of the bag over once more and stitch - this should hide any remaining raw edges

Now you need to join the straps together. Cut to a little longer than the desired length for your strap (try it out for size on your shoulder here).

Then fold the ends together so the raw edges are hidden, and stitch.

These dresses had a handy little tube of ribbon on the straps that I then stitched over the seam to hide it. 

For a little extra decoration, I took the elasticated part from the back of the bodice of the dress, and an offcut from the strap..

....rolled the elasticated part up and tied it..., then handstitched to the side of the bag!

And here's the finished bag:

For the downloadable PDF version of this tutorial click here.

I hope you liked this upcycling project.  I have sooo many clothes that I can't bear to give away or throw out.  So I've decided to turn to upcycling!  There are so many great ideas out there for upcycling clothes, that I thought I would try to create a place to bring them all together.  To have a list of ideas and tutorials  and the links to them all in one place would be awesome.  So I've created a page here at Creating my way to Success for just that! I'll link up any clothes upcycling projects I've done, and add any future ones.

If you have a clothes upcycling project you would like to share, then please come and link up, and feel free to take a button for your site and spread the word. Hopefully we can build up a great resource for everyone to be able to use - and get upcycling those clothes!