Turning an old dress into a new dress!

So the school district that I work for holds a teacher prom every year -- there's dancing, drinks, casino games, food, and (of course!) a prom king and queen. Davey and I went this year and it was 10,000 times better than actual prom was back in the day!

Not being a very fancy person, I needed a dress to wear to teacher prom and at first, I was sure that I didn't have anything in my closet. That is, until I found this dress in the very back corner:

This was the dress that I wore when I went to the Oscars in 8th grade, and while I love the color, it's really not something I would ever wear again. I had mostly just been holding onto it for sentimental reasons, and the off chance that I would need a floor length blue dress some day. Because I wanted to give this dress a second chance, and because of the rules of my "buy nothing new" year, I decided to make this dress above into this dress below:

 Picture of the front coming soon! We had cheesy prom portraits taken so I'll upload those when I get them :)

I hemmed the floor-length skirt into a knee-length skirt, and then used the extra fabric to construct a bodice and sleeves. I had some awesome polka-dot ribbon laying around and decided to use that for a sash. (For the record, I am in no way a professional or even talented seamstress -- I didn't use a pattern or anything, just played around with my sewing machine until the dress looked good!)

I ended up loving this dress so much that I am now totally inspired to alter other clothes that have been hanging in the back of my closet into items that I'll actually wear. For $0 I got a perfectly nice teacher prom dress and gave an old sentimental item new life.

I love the way that this "buy nothing new" year has forced me to become more creative and more resourceful, and find creative solutions that I never would have thought of before!