Tailoring - Quickest way to Tailor a Dress with a Side Zipper

Facebook has been showing me these seasonal dresses in my news feed lately.

And I love them.

They are so cute!

And so me!

Except one thing: I work for my church and even though most people have fun at Halloween, there are some people that don't particularly like jack-o-lanterns, ghosts, and witches. I am not one to go out of my way to offend people, so I just looked at them wistfully and thought I'd move on. . .

Until I saw this dress!

I mean. . .God made bats, right?

So I ordered it.

Only one problem, though. The smallest size they offered was XL. So. . .

It was way too big.

So. . .normally when I take a dress in, I go for the ol' side seam. However. . .

This dress has a side zipper.

There are two ways to fix this situation. The first one involves taking the zipper out, taking the dress in, and then putting the zipper back in.

No thank you. So. . .I did the second option: Take the already existing darts in even further!

Here you can see the dress--inside out--with the front darts pinned.

I pinched the darts up until I got to a "fading point." I put pins at that point.

Notice: I ONLY pinned the bodice. I left the skirt part alone.

I did the same to the back.

So here is the dress inside out and pinned.

Darts are annoying because you usually just have to sew from the bottom pin and eyeball your way up to the top pin. There is a really fool proof way to make sure that your darts are the same dimension. If you have a French curve and a chalk pencil, you can replicate the same shape on each dart. If you don't have a French curve, you can use a ruler in a pinch. . .but a French curve is better because your body is curved, whereas a ruler is straight. (If you don't have a tailor's pencil, use a regular pencil. It's on the wrong side of the fabric. Who's to know.) 

Then, all you have to do is sew along the line. Easy!

The finished dress. I didn't bother darting the skirt because it looks just as good without the darting, so why do more work?

Add a crinoline and you're done!

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