Refashioning: Updating and Deleting a Weird Hem-Line Stripe Trend

Remember this stripe trend from the 90s? It was that sort of nautical thing that Tommy Hilfiger made so popular. (This dress is Liz Claiborne if that tells you anything.) Anyways, I found this dress at Goodwill, and I really liked the thicker stripes, but those narrow ones at the bottom hem just looked really dated to me. Also, the length of the dress was about four inches below the knee--not a good length for me.

So, this is what I did to fix it.

I folded the unwanted striped area in half and pinned it.

This is a close up of the pinning. See how I pinned right along the black part?

This is the pin from the other side. I tried to make sure that all my pins followed along the black line on either side of the fold.

Here is a series of the said pins all along the black stripe that I wanted to keep.

As I sewed, I kept just to the left of the pins to make sure that none of the white peeked through on either side.

After sewing, I ironed the fold up.

And then I top-stitched the fold to keep everything from shifting underneath.

Here you can see my sewing and top-stitching from the back.

Then I cut off the excess of the fold.

( I realize that I could have just cut off the entire bottom hem of the dress and created a new hem, but this way I could keep the actual manufacturer's hem. Plus, I didn't want the dress to be too short. Plus, I liked the big, thick black stripe.)

And here is my completed dress! And you'd be none the wiser if I hadn't told you!

To me, it looks a lot more timeless now.

The End!

Refashioning: Making Clothing More Functional - Fixing a Weird Trend

Sometimes, you find an item at the thrift store and you go, "Now that trend must've lasted about five minutes!" That's how I felt about this dress. From the front it's super Minnie Mouse cute. . .

. . .but from the back, it makes you go, "Crap!" and put it back on the rack, because. . .you can't wear a bra with it!

Fortunately, it's a simple fix.

The first step was to cut the twisted part down the center. To do this, I worked the fabric so that I could fold the bottom of the twist in half like this:

Then, I made a small cut in the fold.

Then, I worked the top part of the twist and folded it in half like this:

And I made a small cut in that fold. (I'm pointing at it).

Then, I worked the fabric so that I was looking at the untwisted band, flat, with my two cuts.

And I cut down the middle.

This cut allowed the twist to lie flat.

I sewed up the middle. Still a problem, because of that hole. If you don't mind the hole, you are done here, but I didn't want my bra to show.

I found a piece of fabric that was slightly larger than the hole.

I pinned it to the inside of the dress around the hole.

And I stitched it up. 

You may like the "before" look better than my fix. It's seriously a preference thing. Anyways, I hope it gives you an idea!

The End!