The Somewhat Domestic Goddess: Dress make over.

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Dress make over.

So I have been cleaning out me and Isaac's closets as I do periodically. I got stumped when I got to this black and white dress. It's very cute, especially with this little short sleeved black cardigan. It fits me pretty well. But I don't think it is particularly flattering. I am short and chubby and anyhing that hits me lower than the bottom of my knee caps makes me look like a tree stump. The dress was about to be tossed into the "give away" pile when I decided to see if I could salvage it.

Here is the before picture (please excuse my workout clothes which I was in too big a rush to change out of). Also, I had to rope Isaac into snapping the pics for me, so excuse the wiggly photography. I think you get the idea though. Tea length hem = not doing much for me. However, Regina Spektor pounding in my ears is always a good thing.

I figured out about where I wanted the skirt to hit me and marked it with a marker. Then I attempted to pin everything below that point up. I ran into some trouble here, because the skirt is flarey, not straight (like a pencil skirt) and there was too much at the bottom when I went to pin it up. Also, I noticed the skirt material had some stretch to it and wasn't sure if I should stretch the fabric as I was sewing or let it fall flat.

So I called up my childhood best friend and seamstress extraordinaire Kathleen. She gave me a lot of advice and also offered to come over this weekend to walk me through it.

Let the record state that I ignored nearly all of her advice and forged on myself to do the project here and now when I was on a roll with it.

And, I think it turned out okay.

Not as flawless as if she would have done it, of course

But it is definitely acceptable.

At any rate. Here's how a non-sewer like me managed to finish this project. I took a ruler and using my original marks measured more marks all around the skirt that were 5.5 inches from the bottom like the mark I made. I just drew them right on with permanent marker. I'm sure you are supposed to use, like, chalk or some kind of sewing crayon. Then I just took my fabric shears and connected all the lines. It wasn't too hard because the flowers sort of formed little rows and I just had to cut across the top of one row.

Then I decided to hem it on the sewing machine. (Note: Kathleen recommended handsewing first.) I just flipped it over so the raw edge was lined up with the left side of the presser foot and the right side was lined up with the folded edge threw a few pins on and got started. I really did line it up better than the picture shows. It's hard to juggle everything plus the camera.