When one of my little sisters, Lauren of Creative Brew and Soulève, posted her engagement photos last year, she was wearing this bomb ass blazer dress.

Look at her looking like black excellence…I mean, her hubby looks great too, but let’s focus on what’s important here.

I was all, “Congrats, now where’d you get the dress?” She told me she got it from Zara. And I ain’t even bother looking for it cus I already knew, that the biggest size they carry is a 12 and that 12 is more like an 8. So I decided to do like I normally do and scour the net for something similar in my size. After hitting up my normal haunts I was able to find several dresses that I liked. However, the cheapest one was $85. I don’t do $85…not for one single ass dress…not even for a coat. So what was I to do? Just act like I’m OK with not owning an article of clothing that’s super cute and sexy and would just look great on me? Nope! Unacceptable.

A few weeks later I was walking through American Way Thrift, here in Burbank, and I got the bright idea to just buy a men’s blazer and alter it.

I looked for blazers that were super big. I didn’t need the girth as much as I needed to make sure that once I altered it, the blazer would be long enough to cover my lady bits. I purchased three blazers because, in the event that I messed up the first, and the second, I’d still have a third to make beautiful…or, I guess, mess up. PS-They were having a 30% off sale and I got three blazers for $20.

The blazer pictured came to a whopping $6.

Please note, my tailoring skills, though improving, are not amazing. I also don’t really work on men’s clothes like at all. So I was a little nervous before I started to take this jammy apart. The very first thing I did was adjust the buttons. I tried on the blazer and marked with chalk where I thought the buttons should go. Then I said a little prayer and removed all the buttons and reattached them so that the bottom half of the blazer was snugger.

Next, I sewed the vents in the back of the blazer shut cus otherwise my cheeks would be hanging out. And although we all know that wouldn’t be the first time, I don’t want everyone having easy access to my lady bits.

Then it was time to start dismantling the blazer. I carefully pulled apart the lining, removed the sleeves and then had to gut the blazer. I don’t know if you know anything about men’s suit blazers, but they are full of all types of miscellany. In addition to the shoulder pads, there’s also padding on the interior of the center front panels.

I removed ALL of that foolishness. Once I did that, the blazer hung just the way I wanted it to.

It still was too big in the shoulder area and under the arms. So I cut it. I took about three inches off of each shoulder. I also took in each side by an inch. The bodice of the blazer was perfect. And then I remembered the sleeves. Not only did I have to reattach them, but I had to alter them as well. Because I’d completely changed the measurements of the armholes by cutting the shoulders and taking in the sides, the sleeves had to be redone. Thankfully, I was able to take in the sleeves at their seam by just about ¾ inch and they matched up to the sleeve holes perfectly.

The sleeve, pinned where the new seam will go.

After reattaching the sleeves, the final step was to reattach the lining.

This took some old-fashioned hand sewing, which was actually a relaxing way to end this project.

Turning my thrift store find into slayage took about three hours over several days. I kept stopping because I’ve never done this before. What I thought were really great ideas, turned out to be big ole’ duds. So I had to rework it a couple of times. I wouldn’t recommend trying a project like this if you are a novice sewist. I’ve been sewing for 20 years and this project really took me through it.

I’m super excited about wearing this to a whiskey tasting or cigar lounge. It’s not cus I particularly like either thing, but I think it’ll make for an amazing photoshoot…and y’all know how I loves me a photo shoot.

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How Me Being Cheap Resulted in a Cute Ass Blazer Dress