Denim dress upcycled 2 ways

For this project I have teamed up with my lovely talented friends over at Little Button Diaries as we took on this gorgeous £6 Asda dress. It is the perfect blank canvas and was just crying out for a little customisation. So we bought one each and came up with our own individual up-cycled design for our little darlings….

One dress/two ways…I went for an autumnal crochet flower collar and Laura and Tia stitched a beautiful geometric trim with extra embroidered details. Here’s how we did it!

Crochet Flower Trim:

You will need:

• Asda light wash denim dress
• Style Craft DK yarn in fondant, meadow, citron and sunshine
• 3mm crochet hook
• sewing thread and needle

From centre left to right; 5 petal flower,leaf,5 petal flower, leaf, 4 petal flower

4 Petal Flower:

Using yarn sunshine. Magic circle, *chain 1, 2 tr crochet into ring, chain 1, slip stitch into ring* makes 1 petal, repeat 3 more times. Make 2

5 Petal Flower:

Using yarn fondant & citron. Magic circle, *chain 2, 2 dc into ring, ch 2, slip stitch into circle* makes 1 petal, repeat 4 more times. Make 2 of each colour

Leaf:

Using yarn meadow. Foundation ch 10, (starting from 2nd ch from hook) 1 sc, 1 half dc, 1 dc, 3 tr crochet, 1 dc, 1 half dc, 1 sc, in last chain 3 sc, then work on other side of foundation ch; 1 half dc, 1 dc, 3 tr crochet, 1 dc, half dc, 1 sc, slip stitch to finish. Make 4

Place the flowers around the collar to arrange them, then sew in the ends to secure. Using a regular sewing needle and thread stitch the flowers securely on to the dress, sewing on the reverse of the fabric.

And now here’s Laura from Little Button Diaries to tell you how she stitched her geometric design….

For the embroidered design:

You will need:

•  Light wash denim dress
• Embroidery thread in a variety of colours
• Embroidery hoop

I drew a triangle template so I could keep the collar width the same and used satin stitch and changed colour for each triangle. Be warned, this was fairly time consuming! Under each triangle, I did a running stitch with a few cross stitches in between. To add a little bit more detail I used a multi coloured embroidery thread to add two lines of running stitch around the bottom of the sleeve and hem.

The possibilities are endless on how you could customise a dress like this! Have fun and please share any makes with us!