Skirt to dress refashion!

I've been reading up on refashioning clothes lately - I'm especially loving this blog: ReFashionista!  She takes the most horrible thrift store clothes and makes them into gorgeous, trendy outfits!  I happened to get a sewing machine for Christmas and I finally got it set up - I've done a little sewing before, but usually with intense guidance from a skilled sewer - now I'm learning to do it on my own!  So anyway, here's a piece that Jillian (the ReFashionista) did that inspired my own!

Inspiration HERE!

Here's the skirt that I started out with:


 

Seeing what it might look like as a dress:

Not bad, but a little longish and loose up top.
(I wore my tank top underneath for coverage.)

 

What I did next:
To be honest, I didn't initially plan to have it be a halter top.  First, I took it in a little bit in hopes that it would fit me as a strapless dress.  That helped.  (Although the pattern in the back looks kinda wonky where I took it in.)  Then I folded the dress and made a diagonal cut to make the "high-low" style I was after.  I hemmed that, which proved a little difficult for me.  (Remember, I'm not an experienced sewer.  Also, I didn't have any pins on hand.  Just don't look at the final hem closely.)  Then I decided that I wasn't comfortable with the strapless part - it just wasn't staying as snugly as I'd like.  So I took the scraps that I cut off the bottom, pieced together a halter strap, and sewed in on (just like in the inspiration piece).  Below is the result!

 

Sweet summer dress!

Ironically, as I type this, I'm home from work due to a snow day (our roads are literally closed, no travel permitted, not common here in Minnesota), so it'll be awhile before I get to wear this in public.  Also, as you can see, I managed to get a picture that I took with my phone properly rotated!  HOORAY!  I rotated it in picmonkey and that seemed to stick, unlike when I rotated it with my computer's software.  And below is my first picmonkey collage: