Saturday, August 27, 2011

Renovating my wardrobe

Remember all the work I've been doing in my closet? One of the pieces that landed in my "hmm..." pile was a simple purple cotton dress from the clearance rack at Target. It has a faux-wrap bodice that is really cute, but as designed it gave an (ahem!) quite amazing view. When I first bought it, I tacked the wrap together in an attempt to fix that little problem, but it just wasn't possible to tack it high enough without messing up the bodice lines. Almost high enough, yes, but not quite!

My friend Elizabeth is quite a seamstress, and she convinced me that it would be "easy!" to add a little lace insert. And she was right! The result not only fixes the low-cut problem, but also makes the whole dress look nicer!



I think this dress now belongs in the "keep" pile. :)

3 comments:

Jen said...

Can this be done by a non-seamstress? I have a machine but know very little about sewing. However, I often encounter this problem. As a result, I own camisoles in nearly every color of the rainbow, which works, but is a pain with nursing and the extra layer adds extra heat, which stinks when it's eleventy billion degrees outside! Is there a tutorial or something?

Ma Torg said...

How clever!!! (and pretty)

Emily (Laundry and Lullabies) said...

Jen, I didn't use a tutorial and (sorry!) I didn't take pictures during the process. And, um, I didn't even really measure anything! I just put on the dress, cut out a too-big piece of fabric and lace, pinned it in where I wanted it (still wearing the dress!) and then started sewing. I did the majority of the sewing by hand, because I didn't want the stitches to show. Once it was sewed to the dress, I trimmed off the excess fabric/lace, and used my machine to semi-finish the edges of the addition (inside, where it isn't visible, but I didn't want them raveling in the wash!