Refashioning: Dolce and Gabbana Inspired - Red Lace Blouse (Plus: How to Fix Snags!)

By now you should know that I love Dolce and Gabbana and get a lot of my inspiration from this designer house. Today, I will show you how to update a red lace blouse to look similar to the D&G ones below.

So here is the blouse I found. It was on a dollar rack, so. . .again. . .I thought it was worth a dollar to see if I could refashion it. Notice how long the sleeves are and how they bell out. That's not my style at all! (No judgement if it's yours, though!)

Okay, before I get to how to fix it, I need to address how to get rid of snags. See the one in the picture below? This poor shirt was covered.

This is an old trick my mom taught me years ago. Find a needle threader. They usually come in those little travel sewing kits, but you can also find them in the sewing notions section of fabric stores.

So, what you do is you push the tip of the threader through the base of wherever your snag is. Make sure you poke it through very close and in front of the snag.

Then, with your finger, guide the snag into the loop of the threader.

Lastly, pull the snag through to the other side. Done! Good as new!

You can't even tell where it used to be. (I know you THINK you can tell, but that's actually the seam you are looking at. The snag in question is a tad farther to the right of the seam.)

Okay, so now that all your snags are fixed, let's get to altering this blouse! Look how long the sleeves are! (Sorry, no full body picture. I was in pajamas with no makeup.)

I cut the sleeves out and look what the armpits did! They jutted out at both sides.

So, I pinned them.

When I pinned them down, I noticed that the top of the shoulders started to gap, so I pinned those too and sewed every down.

Next, the sleeves.

I used the sleeve of a shirt I knew fit me as my pattern.

Then, I cut about an inch or two off the top of the sleeve. I just free-handed the curve because I've done this a million times.

Okay, really important: When you attach sleeves to a bodice, make sure to pin the halfway point at the top of the shoulder of. Then make that pin match the top of the shoulder of the bodice. Pin it. Pin the armpit seam of the sleeve to the armpit seam of the bodice. THEN pin the rest of the sleeve up. Always work at the two extremes before you pin the rest of the lengths and you'll be way less aggravated.

Okay, I actually had to take a little more off the sides of the bodice, but here is the finished shirt with a red tank top under it.

Remember that skirt from my last post?

The End!

Simple Alterations for a Dress with a Gathered Skirt - Red Lace Dress

Remember when I made this Dolce and Gabbana inspired red lace dress? Well, ever since then, I try to be on the lookout for lace dresses. I got the one below from Goodwill for a dollar!! (Can you believe it???) It's obviously too big, so this blog is about how to do simple alterations to a dress with a gathered skirt.

First step is getting rid of those horrid armhole ruffles! They were actually sewn right in between the top layer and interfacing, so I simply cut them off, cutting really closely to the seam without snipping the important layers.

As you can tell from the picture above, the dress is just too wide for me, and the skirt is a tad long, making the dress look frumpy. 

There are several ways to go about altering a dress like this one. You could cut it apart and dart it and reattach the skirt. You could sew a seam from the arm hole to the bottom hem on both sides. I chose the method below because this dress has two layers to every part (lace over top a layer of white).

The first step in alteration was to sew a basting stitch about two fingers down from the waistband onto the skirt. This was primarily to keep the two layers together, but would also help me re-gather the skirt later when I reattached it.

A close-up.

In case it was too hard to tell from the pictures above, you can see the line I stitched onto the skirt here. (I'm pointing at it.)

The next thing I did was to cut right in between the waistband and the basting line I just stitched.

Here it is completely cut apart. See how important it was to baste the skirt before cutting? It stayed together in one piece this way.

Next, I sewed seams on either side of the bodice from the armpit to the waistband. I would have actually darted the bodice, except there is a little bit of elastic in the waistband and darting it would have made the waistband pucker weirdly.

Then, I trimmed the sides and overcasted the side seams.

Then, I grabbed the loose ends of the threads I used to sew the basting line and pulled at them and worked the fabric around until the skirt waist was the same size as the bodice waist.

Then, I pinned the bodice to the skirt, right sides together, and flattened the skirt back as much as possible to add a second row of pins. This second row was to help me as I sewed to keep the skirt gathers out of the way of the machine needle as skirt gathers like to pucker and jam in sewing machines.

This is after sewing and then overcasting the skirt to the bodice.

Then, I trimmed the excess fabric away from the waistband.

I look kind of gross here. It was the end of the day and I didn't feel like reapplying makeup!

It fits better now!

The End

Dolce and Gabbana Inspired: Red Lace Tunic Dress

You know the phrase, "That money is burning a hole in your pocket!". . .Well, I had two tiny pieces of that red lace left. We're talking a piece that was 35" by 44" and a piece that was 16" by 28". Anyways, I had other plans for my day, but I couldn't focus on any of them because this fabric was calling my name.

Okay, Class, remember this picture?

I haven't been able to get this dress out of my head. It's just so comfy looking that I just had to try to make it. I had hoped I'd have enough red lace to do a third look, but. . .alas, it was not meant to be. That romper will have to do.

Here is another view:

And another (the one on the right):

So, I'm not sure what the back looks like again, but I did notice that the front has this sort of dropped top hem with the material underneath. Here is a closeup:

I think this original dress is actually a red lace dress with a red slip underneath, but since I had some more red bed sheet material, I thought I might just attach them together to make one dress.

Here is what I came up with:

I know it looks sort of feed sack-y, and of course it needs the wrinkles steamed out, but it looks much cuter on a person. Too bad I'm too much of a slacker today to model it.

You've probably noticed three differences. This dress has no symmetry; the bottom hem doesn't flair out like the original (nor do the sleeves); and it's not as fitted as the original. Okay, the symmetry and flairing issues are due to the fact that I was REALLY limited on fabric. Had I had about five more inches, the dress would look a lot more true to the original. Also, the fitting issue is due to the fact that I wanted this dress to be a pull-over and not a zippered one. I plan to wear a black belt with it to cinch the waist.

This dress took about two hours from start to finish. That includes the pre-planning! Once I had my pattern, everything pretty much fell into place. I cut all four of the the dress pieces the same. Then I cut the front lace neckline slightly lower, and the front solid neckline much lower. I only had to cut two sleeves. I didn't have to hem the lace part because I'd cut around the flowers to create edging. So pretty much, all I had to sew was the front red lace neckline, the front solid red neckline, the front and back necklines together, the shoulders together, the sleeves onto that, and then close up the sides of both the sleeves and the sides of the dress. I even cheated on the hem of the solid red part as shown below. I just used a jersey stitch instead of folding over and hemming. This was to conserve the length of the dress.

I did the same jersey stitch (rather than folding and hemming) to the solid red neckline so it wouldn't fall lower than the bra-line.

The End!