Refashion #26 // Dress #5 :: Flutterbudget

That was Charles Ingall's nickname for his daugher Laura, wasn't it? I remember loving that series so much, especially the improvisational way they created a home from ... from scratch, really. That creating, that spirit of making do, those were the passages I would read and reread as a kid ... still do, when I'm feeling nostalgic. Maybe that's part of what drives my interest in refashioning and why it called out to me, so instantaneously, nearly 4 years ago now.

My latest dress, another dress refashion (we're aiming for 80!) ...

From this:

I think it's a sundress from ... the 90's? The 70's? Anybody? I zoomed in on it immediately in the thrift shop; something about the pattern really drew me in. And of course, we all know that overly large is OK when refashioning, and actually larger is better because it provides more source material. The dress had been worn so often that the tag has faded and I cannot tell what size it is marked at, or what the material is, but it's a lovely, cool, soft and drapey fabric that feels like it was already well loved before I got it, and doesn't look one bit worn.

To refashion this, I first took up the dress by about 2.5" on each side by flipping the dress inside out and stitching 1.25" from the original shoulder seam line. This lifted the entire dress so that the empire seamline hit under my bust instead of just above my natural waistline. As a kid, my mom used to adjust some of my dresses like this until I grew into them. It's a handy trick for petites to know ;-) ... especially if you don't want your bra strap showing at the armholes!

Then, because the dress was still too wide, I used smocking in the back to pull in the waist. I threaded elastic thread into my bobbin and made rows of stitches 1/4" apart. I marked where my natural waist falls, and smocked from the empire seamline until my natural waist. You could probably just mark your natural waist and smock 1" above and 1" below the waistline to cinch in at the narrowest part of your waist.

But what I'm most excited about: the sleeves!

Initially I'd planned to just hem it up and call it a day, but when I tried the dress on and looked in a mirror, it looked a little ... underwhelming. My body type is such that, if I don't somehow emphasize my shoulders, I tend to look very rectangular (whereas if I incorporate my shoulders into the silhouette then it gives the impression of an hourglass). So I used the 6" fabric strip from the bottom of the dress to play around with sleeve options, and this is what I settled on:

I utilized the hem of the dress as the sleeve hem, slid the raw edge under the armhole, pinned, and then pinned a couple pleats around the top edge of the sleeve cap. As I got towards the middle I started "slanting" the fabric inwards, so that the sleeve hem "enters" the armhole about 1" from the very bottom of the armhole. I stitched straight over the original armhole hemline, leaving raw edges underneath on the inside of the dress, which I then covered with some hem tape (handstitched in). It took some pinning and repinning, and the sleeves are definitely not symmetrical but with the flutter and the drape of the fabric, nobody can tell!

I'm pretty pleased with this one, if I do say so myself. I'm happy to have found an alternative to "take in the sides" or "cut out an entirely new dress" for refashioning an overly large dress, although I wouldn't try this for a dress that's really really big. And the sleeves just make it ... complete. It's liberating knowing that I can improvise some sleeves onto a refashion. Step by step, the ENTIRE thrift shop is opening up to me ...