Bridesmaid Dress Refashion

I don’t know about you, but I have a few bridesmaid dresses hanging in my closet that, while lovely, aren’t likely to get worn again. For my brother-in-law’s upcoming wedding, I decided to attempt to refashion this purple dress from Cheri’s wedding into something a little more casual. I gave myself enough time, though, that if it turned out badly, I could always

I assumed this would be a quick cut-off-the-bottom-and-rehem endeavor, so I carefully measured… and cut off a significant amount of fabric.

But, since this was a floor-length dress, it didn’t just go straight down from the hips. It gradually belled out so that you could actually walk in the dress, and it had a little bit of a train at the back. I didn’t think about this when I first cut & hemmed it, but the end result was that the last 6 inches or so of the newly-shortened dress still had a distinctive outward slant – which looks rather awkward on a short dress.

(I realize that this doesn’t look so bad in a photo, but it looked really awkward on me…)

So, I ripped out the last several inches of all 7 of the vertical seams and resewed them to be more parallel with each other, so that the hem of the dress falls straight down, rather than sticking out oddly.

Much better! I think it still needs something around the waist, and I think I can use the original sash, just wrap it around my waist twice to take in the extra length. But now my question is: knot in front, or in back? Or something else entirely?