REMINDER:
If you want to check out 8″ Ten Ping’s dress set, “Little Lambie”… you better hurry… it ends tonight (Thursday) on Ebay, and sadly, Ten Ping will be stripped of wearing it. She’s not the only one who’s going to miss it. Every once in a while I make a doll dress and fall in love with it myself… this was one of those… It is SO adorable in person… and she was so sweet in it! Sitting on my cutting table, and seeing her all week in it, just made me want to keep it, BUT…that’s not what I do… I make ’em and sell ’em! :o)
If you missed it, you can click on her picture at the right side bar, or you can click HERE.
Okay, did you see today’s title for this post. I’m going to keep repeating that over and over and over until it’s the first thing that comes out of my mouth when I hear something like this… “Jeanne, my daughter is getting married and she has this wedding dress that just needed a simple alteration…. I don’t think it is anything…” INTERRUPTION by me… “I’m sorry, but I just altered my LAST wedding dress!”
See, I can do that, can’t I???
This one has about done me in… I wish I had a before picture of the dress on the girl who wants it. It is about 4 sizes to small, to be honest… I probably should have said it wasn’t possible to fix it… but she wanted it and so I caved…She found it at the Thrift store and it was a vintage dress someone had made, but it is sort of a Renaissance style dress, which was exactly what she wanted. I happened to be in the Thrift store when she saw it, she and her mom saw me and the rest is history…
This was the drawing I made of the dress to show her the only way I could see to fix the dress and those measurements are how much material was “lacking” in the middle of the back… The sleeves fit, the shoulders fit, the length was fine, but the back was really too tight… there used to be a zipper up the back, but she could only get it zipped about 7 inches up from the bottom.
It wasn’t just a big “V” area… it was wider at the waist than the mid-back area… so who knows if my idea is going to work. We have a fitting on Friday morning…
It used to zip all the way up, so I started by taking the zipper out and there happened to be a little bit of extra fabric folded under. I don’t have a full length mannequin, but only a table top one, and this was the dress on the mannequin sitting on my ironing board…
I had to clear off the dining room table and make that my sewing space today…
See these black “dot’s” on the back? That is where the zipper used to be… but I gained that little bit of extra fabric… but it’s not nearly enough…
My mannequin is smaller than the girl who will be wearing this, so it was kind of hard to keep it in place without it falling off the shoulders… This piece of stabilizer was cut just to see how much fabric I was probably going to be adding…
This is the inside of the dress… you can see the “extra” bit of fabric a little better in this picture…
She wanted 5/8″ satin ribbon running through the loops… but the loops were NOT an easy fix… the satin was too slippery to do them just by laying the cording on the satin and trying to stitch it… this was my first try…
…and the front…
NOPE…
Try number 2 was discarded before I took a picture… oops…
Try number 3… cut and pin each piece in place on a marked spot on the satin…with a little help from some double sided sewing tape. This still wasn’t very easy…
…but I thought it would work…
I had a scrap piece of a ribbon and wanted to give it a try… I didn’t have the other side finished yet, so I just used a ruler to wrap it around…
It seemed like it was going to work, so I finished stitching it down that side…
I really wanted to see if it was going to work when it was pulled on, so I grabbed some big safety pins and put them on the back left side, so I could loop them through and then back through the corded loops… what a contraption I had going on in this picture… I had to put that purple ribbon around the neck and pin it to the shoulders to keep the dress from sliding off…
I made the left side of loops and sewed them in place…The loops on the left side are sewn to a double layer piece of the satin as a modesty panel. It just lays loose on the right side, but stays in place as the laces are tightened.
Here is a little bit closer picture of it…
Okay…now DON’T freak out when you see this pink ribbon… it was the only soft ribbon I had that was at least 6 yards long… which is about what it will take to lace this up… I just HAD to see if this was going to work…It looks loose because it’s not pulled tight. My mannequin is too small for me to cinch it up the way it will be on the girl who is wearing it… so just imagine it’s tightly pulled up on her back…
You can see how the ribbon is laced through the loops…
I basted all the insides down in place and HOPEFULLY at the fitting on Friday, this basting can all come out and I can stitch the insides down for good… here is a picture of the dress just laying flat with the loops on each side… It will need to be steamed to get the creases out of the back… but that’s minor…
Whew…what a day… like I said… “MY LAST WEDDING DRESS!”
It’s 11:00 and I’m going to bed…
See you tomorrow,
Blessings, Jeanne
First of all, thanks to everyone for your nice comments on my pictures from Sewing Expo! I did answer every one (as of a couple of hours ago, anyway). And thanks, Jeanne, for letting me share.
Oh, my, I would have just said no at the outset!! That is a huge alteration to make!! But you seem to have figured it out quite well, and I think it’ll look really nice when it’s done. I hope you give an honest assessment of your time/hourly wages for this job!! It’s important to give your work value!!
By the way, you do know you can get satin rattail in two different sizes, don’t you? You didn’t say, but I Hope that’s what you used, rather than trying to cover cording yourself! I think you probably could by those loops pre-made, too; I would imagine they are pretty widely available, since this style is popular in both bridal and cosplay costumes/gowns.
When I made my wedding gown, I bought pre-made button loops, so I didn’t have to fiddle with that sort of thing. But these were for Buttons (and I bought buttons already covered in white satin, too–covering buttons is not my best skill, by a long shot!), not for lacing, so they really didn’t show once the buttons were in the loops. I used 45 buttons–33 down the back, and 6 on each sleeve. My girlfriend Judy had thought gowns that buttoned down the back looked so pretty!! She got to button me up!! 😂🤣😂 (She was one of my bridesmaids.)
Jeanne, from what I see of it, that bride dress is just beautiful! That really WAS quite an alternation, to say the least!! You did a wonderful job on it, and for sure, it has a medieval vibe! What a lucky bride!
Charlotte, your dress sounds lovely! How about a picture if you can find one?
Jeanne that is quite an impressive fix! Thank you for being a godsend for this bride. I’m sure this will make it a very special day. Hope we get to see the finished dress. I wonder about the headpiece. There are so many ways to go. Crown, flower wreath, circlet . . . Just be careful that you don’t get snookered into that! But I guess we could be “sofa aunties” and help with ideas hmmm.
If you ever say “yes to the dress” again I will disown you! :))))))))
Yes ma’am, said the big sister to the little sister! :o)
Wow, Jeanne, that is quite a job. It reminds me of my having to fix my niece’s wedding dress. She had gained weight since she bought it and the zipper was broken anyway. I was in her home in Aurora, CO and had to use her machine which was foreign to me. I had never made loops, but did “sew”. However, when she tried it on with her Spanks the “skin” color was all off. There was no time to shop, so I cut some fabric from the under skirt where it wouldn’t show and patched it on under the loops. Then I had to adjust both of the bridesmaid dresses for the two young girls, one hers and the other her husband’s (second marriage for them both.). The dresses were strapless and I had to make them so they would stay up on these skinny kids. Needless to say, I was very busy before the wedding as we were only there for 2 days before it. It did work out fine, though and everyone’s strapless dresses stayed up. Her husband told me I should have sent scissors with them on the wedding night to get her out of the dress, LOL!
What lovely finish work, Jeanne. Just beautiful. This reminds me of years in the past when women wore corsets to narrow their waists. I’ve seen photos of attendants huffing and puffing trying to pull the corset stays tighter and tighter. I wonder if using satin cording or narrower ribbon instead of the wide ribbon would lessen the emphasis on the addition? Just a thought. Can’t wait to hear how the try on goes. I’d love to see a pic of the back of the dress while being worn. This is an example of such sewing expertise. Another winner for Jeanne. 🙂
Forgot. I wonder how the dress would look with the back ribbon tied at the top rather than the bottom? I was looking at it again. 🙂
Hi Joy,
I looked and didn’t see any that had the bow tied at the top… I think it needs to be pulled the tightest at the top where there is the
most pull on the dress… around the bustline… you need that extra length at the top to make it sturdy… I’ll try to get a picture of it
on the girl tomorrow…
Blessings, Jeanne
Wow, that is quite the project. I love your “save”. At least you will be getting paid for your trouble. When my oldest stepdaughter presented me with her resale shop find that she wanted to wear to her prom I could not say no. It was a huge reno and it was a labor of love and thus a freebie. But I’m not sure it was any worse than her sister asking me to make her prom gown from scratch the next year and bringing me a Vogue pattern and some very slippery fabric. Oh the stories those who sew could tell.
The outside of my house addition is now finished. They were able to use the stones that were taken from the wall at the back of the garage but only so much. The stones were not quarried as we thought but were evidently manufactured and that was around 1945 so they were no longer available. We wanted to keep the side you see from the road mostly with the stone so they used most of what they could there and then went to a few rows across the back and along the side by the back door. The rest was done in hardy plank. Sean and David took a sample of the colonial blue vinyl we used for trim on the house to the paint store for matching so there would be no clash of colors which would have driven me crazy. They painted the hardy plank with the blue and trimmed around the windows and the corners of the addition in white. Sean did a lot of the painting himself. He seems to be following in David’s footsteps having a love for painting and he’s very good. The addition really looks nice, but it sure makes the back of my house look different.
WOW Jeanne. You are a miracle worker. My daughter bought a quite expensive dress for her wedding (IMHO) which really didn’t have much in the way of inner “foundation” (I can’t think of a better word?!) Anyway, the shop had a list of “seamstresses” that they recommended for alterations. My daughter picked one that a friend of hers had used. WELL! perhaps it was because her friend had alterations that weren’t as critical, perhaps it was because the alteration was done by a different person from the same place, perhaps the the alteration person just didn’t give a damn, but my daughter at the last minute ( if memory serves it was actually a few weeks before the wedding) was in a panic because the alteration made her look like she was a stuffed sausage (she’s not fat, but it made her look like she was!) I made my own MOTB gown (for BOTH of my daughter’s weddings), but I didn’t think I was up to the task – not only do I NOT like to do alterations, fitting isn’t my strong suit. My daughter actually considered looking for an entirely new dress, but fortunately she found another person to do some additional altertions which made the gown look like a dream. BUT she did pay for a NEW expensive dress, alterations at the first place, and alterations at the second place (which were quite expensive also) but she DID have a happy ending.
The dress is beautiful. I am always amazed at your skill, I think the bride is going to be thrilled.
I find it hard to say no to those girls need prom dresses or wedding dresses altered too. I crossing my fingers my granddaughter who will be married Labor Day weekend will not need alterations. They measured everything and it was pricey so I hope it fits..if not my daughter is a sewer…she can fix it😍🫣
One dress I fixed was a beige all over lace and was just too snug everywhere and did not have any extra in the seams. When she tried it on she had on a strapless hip length boned bra and the dress had some foam cups under the lining. I was stumped until we got to looking and took out the foam cups and then she took off the heavy long bra as well and put the dress back on with NOTHING under it and we all cheered ..it fit👏😲😉
Maybe we should all send Jeanne a wedding picture. …wouldn’t that be a hoot!