Alterations

This dress is one of my all-time favorites, I made it for my daughter last year.

(Just noticed the date, I took this photo exactly one year ago.)

The fabric line is from Art Gallery fabrics. It is so pretty!  I pulled the dress out for her to wear to a birthday party this past weekend and had trouble getting it on her.  The armholes were very tight under her arms, and I could tell it was bothering her.

I always planned to cut off the bodice and turn it in to a skirt when she out grew it, but I wasn’t ready to give up on it yet.  I wanted to experiment a little to see if I could make it fit a while longer.

What I decided to do was to pick out the casing and remove the elastic around the neck and sleeves.  I serged the edge, then folded it over and hemmed it.  This gave me an extra inch of room, so the arm holes would hang a little lower. ( I was planning to do a rolled edge, but couldn’t get the settings right on my serger and my ‘test’ edges didn’t look so great.)  After that, I shirred around the entire neckline and sleeves 4 times to replace the elastic.  I did a few more rows of shirring in the front so the dress would hang a little better.

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Here is the result:  The dress fits much better, but I think I still need to remove the casing from the bottom edge of the sleeve and shirr it too.  (Makes such a cute effect anyway.)

This was right before bed, she was being a little ham, anything to delay the inevitable…