An Infinity Dress For Everyone

so, i've come to love a site called burdastyle.com! this is a site that offers free and purchasable patterns and people can upload projects that they have been working on.  while browsing one day i found a tutorial for an infinity/convertible dress.  basically, this dress has a circle skirt attached to two straps at the top, which you can arrange in an array of different ways and change the look of the dress.  i decided i wanted to make the dress, and do my own variation.  so, here is the tutorial for the way i did mine.

step 1:  to make this dress, you will need 3-5 yards of fabric, depending on how tall you are and how long you want your straps.  for me, my skirt was abt 17" long and my straps were 100" long.  to get your srap length you take your height and multiply that by 1.5. since i am 5'7" i took 67"x 1.5"= 100.5"  i also used a stretch jersey for the top and a cotton print for the bottom.

step 2:  to make your skirt, fold your fabric in half length wise, the inhalf again width wise.  measure your waist and divide by 6.28 to get me measurement of your first arc.  for me, my waist was 30" and divided by 6.28 was 4.7".  so 4.7" from the corner point of my fabric i started making my arc.  then to get the length of my skirt i measured 17" down from the waist.  once you have your lines drawn cut out your skirt and you will have a big circle.

step 3:  now, you are going to cut out your straps.  on pretty much every tutorial i've looked at for this dress they talk about how much of a pain it is to cut the straps b/c of the length.  to make it easier for me, i took half of my measurement and folded my fabric so that it was half of my strap length on both sides.  so basically i folded my fabric so that each side was 50" long and cut it out, and that way when i opened it up they were 100" long.  to figure out how wide your straps will be, you will measure across your chest from the center to under one arm and that is how wide you need to make your straps to make sure they cover you.

step 4:  this step i added myself and is what makes my tutorial different from others.  since the dress is basically two straps up top, i made a band to cover my top half to make sure the dress wouldn't be too revealing.  to make the band, i cut out two pieces the length of my waist measurement and to get the height i measured however high up on my chest i wanted it.  for me, that was 11" and the band is above my breasts and sits under my armpit, but not up in it.lol

step 5:  this is the step where you will begin to put your dress together.  all the other tutorials use one seam, but i knew for me i would need more than one for things to stay in place while sewing.  so first, i attached the straps.  when you attach your straps you'll want to overlap them 3"-5" in the center then pin to the ends and sew in place.

step 6:  next, you will attach the waistband.  for this step, i pinned the waistband in place then sewed it.  then i sewed a seam up the back using a flat zig-zag stitch to close the band.  once you close your band you are done, and can enjoy your new dress!

now that you have your new dress, have fun discovering all the ways you can arrange the straps! here is a link showing the different ways you can do them https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUnS4HBI2siznd4WqQ5v0x555dcHaRJR2kakOsJK8EtVF1-eKbn6Qt2HFH8SbuajfBMMBPKIF_YpU1FNdRLjTkvbLbWfoivAHvvg3sdB7h8MnbWHrWJev69NyOnADYRBNxUb15o1BecZhA/s1600/InfinityWearingIdeas.png

also, here are the tutorials that inspired me:
http://knucklesalad.com/convertible-infinity-dress-how-it-almost-defeated-me-and-what-you-need-to-make-one/

http://sewlikemymom.com/little-red-infinity-dress-tutorial/

http://www.burdastyle.com/projects/jersey-convertible-dress

http://rowena.typepad.com/rostitchery/infinity-dress.html