Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Tailor That Dress at Home!


So, while trying to clean out my closet a few weeks ago, I noticed one of my favorite dresses hiding all the way in the back. It was hiding with the other dresses, pants and shirts that I wore pre-kids and pre-weight gain. I know you allll have that section in your closets! The section that we keep around because we think we will eventually loose the weight and fit back into them. I gave up on most pants. Those were given away. It took me three years to snap out of denial and realize that I will never, ever fit into a size 27 jeans ever again. I'm OK with that. Really

Dresses on the other hand, are much more forgiving when we have some body changes or weight gain. In this case, this dress fit once again but I could not get the zipper up. Instead of giving it away, which I did not want to do since I paid way too much for it over 11 years ago, I tailored it a bit. I tried it on and marked the area where the zipper reached it's highest struggle.
Remove the dress. Zip the dress up to the marked area. Fold in the dress and pin using push pins. It is very important to fold in right at the inner corners of the spaghetti straps as shown in yellow below. Make sure the lining of the dress, if any, is also tucked in neatly before pinning.
You can lightly hand sew or machine sew.  I would recommend hand sewing lightly, remove pins then machine sew.
Remove the hook & eye from the dress' original area where the zipper ends and reuse at the new location where the zipper ends.
Enjoy!
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7 comments:

  1. AnonymousJuly 12, 2011

    It looks like you didn't zip it up all the way. I would suggest removing the head of the zipper and lining the edge with ribbon.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for your great suggestion and a good observation at that, but it only appears not zipped all the way because I did not hook the hook and eye closed at the top of the zipper head. My mistake before taking the photograph...

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  3. I spent today frantically searching the mall for a dress that I needed for an event. I wasn't able to find anything until I went to the thrift store. I found the perfect dress for only $3. I was so happy except it was one size too small. I pinned this tutorial earlier in the year and I'm so glad I did. I just finished making the adjustments and the dress is perfect now. Thanks so much for the tutorial!

    ReplyDelete
  4. I just picked up a beautiful dress at goodwill that mostly fits but wont zip up all the way. Totally using this tutorial on it. Thank you!!!

    ReplyDelete
  5. what if the zipper is on the side instead?

    ReplyDelete
  6. Did you leave the rest of the zipper in and just sew around it?

    ReplyDelete

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