a ROUGH tutorial

this is what i started with. this size 8 ladies jumper was only a $1 at a local 2nd hand store and i knew exactly what i wanted to do with it as soon as i seen it. one dollar people!

So this is the final result and i have been asked to write a tutorial.  I'm not great with words so it'll be a rough  step by step

firstly i unpicked the hood and put aside for later. then i measured my little one from shoulder to chest - where i wanted the high waist to drop from. i cut off the 'skirt' here.  then i took one of her dresses and folded it in half and drew around it with a generous seam allowance. this is the pattern piece on the jumper

i thought this would be a good time to photograph the massacre 

i sewed up the shoulders and side seams then i fiddled with the hood and cut an inch off before sewing it back on. then i took the sleeves and got miss v to put them on and i resized them by making them narrower and i cut them to the right length. MAKE SURE YOU TURN THE SLEEVE THE RIGHT WAY NOW (i didn't the first time and it's really HARD to unpick this fabric!) next i poked the sleeve in through the arm hole (so it will look like the finished arm in a min) from the inside i then stitched the arm in place. if either the arm or the hole is larger at this point you could do a little gathering to fake your way through (not real professional here, lol)
 then i took the 'skirt' and spun it around so that the back would be the front. i unpicked the pockets (and never ended up putting them back on)

i then made some pleats in the skirt - again not at all professionally,  i just guessed where to put them and how large to make them. basically i just wanted the skirt side seams to meet the top side seams. i did a little tacking to keep them in place.  next i placed the finished top on the skirt so that both raw edges and right sides were together and i pinned only the front and sewed together

i flipped it over and roughly (obviously the seam isn't exactly center) figured out where the back seam would lye and i sewed it up leaving that little ribbing band at the bottom open - no reason why i just did. then i turned the whole garment inside out and sewed up the back of the high waist.

TA DA this is the end product - easy peasy! i've probably missed some vital piece of info here so please feel free to ask any questions! this project took me 3 hours but in that time i also made some pop corn for my aspiring model! thanks sew much for reading!
meg