Infinity Dresses. Convertible Dresses. You’ve seen them all over Pinterest as the answer to every bride’s worst nightmare: trying to find dresses that match and look great on ALL of your bridesmaids. But as with anything that seems perfect, there are some definite drawbacks.

1) Expense – These dresses range from $80 all the way up to over $200! In terms of quality, you tend to get what you pay for. Many of the cheaper dresses have terrible reviews because of the fabric quality.

2) Coverage – See all those adorable ways to wrap the dress? Note that you can’t really wear a bra with any of them, and if you’ve got a little extra in the curves department (and not all in the right places), say hello to back-fat (and side-fat and tummy-fat depending on how you wrap the dress).

Those are really the two main concerns when it comes to the infinity dress, and I am happy to tell you that the d.i.y. version fixes them both!

As I researched the infinity dress online, I ran across multiple people saying that they had made them, and then I stumbled onto the tutorial for The Little Red Infinity Dress by Melissa at Sew Like My Mom. I have never seen something that looked so easy! I don’t have a sewing machine and haven’t sewn anything since middle school home-ec (at least not successfully), and I thought even I could do this. After reading her other post on adding a bandeau to add modesty, I decided to go for it.

One Walmart shopping trip (mine still has fabric) and five hours later, I had gone from just an idea to a beautiful wear-able dress! I got my fabric (all 6 1/2 yards of it because I was afraid I would mess up) for $1 a yard and my thread cost $1.15. Total cost for this d.i.y. modest infinity dress? $7.65

Modifications:

1) My fabric wasn’t bolted wide enough to give me the skirt length I wanted while still fitting my waist 100%, but the fabric is stretchy so I went ahead and cut my waist hole smaller than my actual measurement divided by 6.28 (by about two inches) so my skirt would be longer. To make up for this, I had to use a stitch that would stretch when sewing everything together. I can’t remember where I found it, but it basically looked like a bunch of x’s in a row. You go diagonally down, then backwards, then diagonally up, then backwards, then repeat. It takes a lot of thread, but the diagonal stitches allow for your fabric to stretch without popping the stitches.

2) I made my straps an extra two inches wide and overlapped them quite a bit in the middle (they still wrap around partially to the sides of my dress). I love having the extra-wide fabric to work with because it helps with coverage.

Ba-bam!

The possibilities for wrapping this dress are endless, and what looks best really depends on your body. I wanted full sleeves for modesty purposes. I will tell you that if you start with the straps in the back of the dress and then wrap them over opposite shoulders (left strap over right shoulder, right strap over left shoulder) it is easier to get back coverage (and since your bandeau will be covering your front, you’ll be ready to wrap away). I definitely recommend looking up videos on youtube for how to wrap these dresses.