Craft Attack - Dress Altering

I've been looking over the things I like to do outside of crochet and a wonderful opportunity fell in my lap.

Dress Alterations

Prom was coming up and there were a few girls I go to church with that wanted to make their dresses more modest.  Modesty is a very important value to me and I was more than willing to share my skills (and work on improving them).
This dress was spaghetti strap before we added the sleeves. After searching the internet for ideas I took a stab at it. Sadly, with all of these dresses I didn't take pics as I went (this was just before I decided to do fun tutorials on my blog). If you have more specific questions about how I did certain things feel free to post here and ask or shoot me an email.

Not too shabby I think. What I did was cut a strip of fabric about 1 inch wider than the sleeve size she wanted. This piece was also longer than what it would take to come up an over her shoulder.

 I then hemmed the edges and did a basting stitch on one one of the strip of fabric.  We gathered it slightly and pinned it to the dress to see exactly where to place it so it would give the coverage and look she wanted. This dress has a secondary piece in the from so I was able to use the sewing machine to sew it down but you could also sew it down by hand just catching the lining fabric (so the stitches don't show through the front).

She tried the dress back on and I pinned it down in the back (you could also baste and gather it slightly if that's the look you want).

The next part was a little trickier. I had to cut the spaghetti strap in order to hand sew the back of the strap down flat. Then i sewed the spaghetti strap back down inside the sleeve. This is important because the spaghetti strap gives more support to keep the dress up than the added sleeve.

I know it would have been even better if I had taken pics as I went but i'm new to blogging and it totally escaped my mind to do that.

 This is her lovely sister and I also altered her dress but not the same. The dress was too big for her and hung too low (it's sleeveless under the cute jacket she has on). I took in the top seam of the sleeve (at her shoulder) by 2 inches and then did a similar thing down each side.

The only thing with the side is to do it at an angle. Hips are wider than shoulders usually so if you take it in by 2 inches at the top (under the arm) then it should be taken in by less at the hips. I usually pin both ends and then follow an imaginary angle to meet the two.
 





This is beautiful Belle. A young lady I go to church with was Belle in her school's performance of Beauty and the Beast. The dress was sleeveless so we took some sheer fabric that matched the yellow of her dress and created sleeves.

Instead of hemming the sides of the sleeves like in the first red dress above, I created a tube with the fabric so the raw edges are underneath the sleeve (i didn't even sew the tube closed). I held it together and did a basting stitch to gather the ends then I hand sewed the sleeves to the dress.

I hope you are inspired by this post to go and try something you've never done before (sewing or not). And if you happen upon a dress that isn't quite right be inspired to change it to fit your liking.

Have a fabulously inspired day!