I found this 2 piece set at the thrift store and immediately knew I would probably keep it for myself. It's a black velvet with brown leaves and it's super stretchy. My vision initially was to wear both pieces with the shirt tied up (shown below on the left). In my head it looked flattering. Once I got home and tried it on, that was not the case. Untied it was even worse, so I had to figure out another plan.
The top wasn't the issue, it was the dress so I decided pants would be a better option and I definitely had enough length to start reworking.
First thing I did was cut a straight line to get rid of the armholes.
Next I cut the remaining part of the dress in half. Now you can see it's starting to look like pant legs.
Next step was to flip the pants upright and cut out the crotch curves using a pattern sloper from LC Apparel Consulting (shout out Lenese!). The paper I have was used from a class I took but the real deal is available for purchase here.
I wasn't too worried about the pattern piece fitting exactly. As you can see there was less fabric than pattern paper but I knew these would turn out more like leggings anyway. The last steps were to sew the pants together! I used a zig zag stitch because of the stretch and hemmed the bottoms of the pant legs. The hem of original dress ended up being the top of the pants so there was no extra sewing needed at the waist. This is why I love reworking! I was able to skip a step that normally would have needed to be done if I was making these from scratch. This set is really comfy. I could easily wear the leggings with a sweatshirt to go shopping or spice it up with some heels eventually.
