I received this piece from one of my favorite people in the world - Melissa of Shoestring Magazine - and she outdid herself.

Now if a "friend" gave you this piece as a present, I might want to rethink the friendship, however Melissa is my thrifting kindred spirit and knew this shirty-dress-kaftan would be right up my alley.

So not only did my sister from another mister give me this rockin' ensemble...

...but also sent a Richard Simmons coffee table book in my package. This snail mail day was one for the records, because...

...Richard Simmons happens to be one of my best pals.

OK, well "best pals" probably is a bit of a stretch, but I did get my "sweatin' to the oldies" on at his class a while back and that's pretty close, right? So, want to see how this peachy piece turned out???

I started off by removing the sleeves!

I have some fun leftovers that I'll be repurposing very soon :)

The part of the piece that was most intriguing to me was the incredible embroidery! I just loved the detail up and down the front of the shirt. To make that stand out even more, there were a few things that needed to be done.

First, it was time to go shorter!

Next, it was time to remove the stitches at the neckline. I wanted the collar to be separated from the rest of the top.

Boom!!!

As soon as I saw the neckline, I thought halter top!! After the collar was removed from the bottom portion of the shirt, I trimmed back some of the material and pinned it down beneath the vertical embroidery to form a T shape of sorts.

I stitched a new hem...

I stitched down the neckline...

...and I stitched the body to make it fitted.

Three major changes = 1 brand new look!

I wanted to make this a top so the peach color next to my skin wouldn't wash me out too much!

I pinched and gathered the material and stitched it at the bottom of the T shape (on each side of the embroidery) to give the top a splash of femininity.